By Jonathan Brazeau
The Montana's Canadian Curling Trials move fast and furious with four draws down and just three more to come in round-robin play at Halifax's Scotiabank Centre.
Quick reminder: only the top three teams advance to the playoffs — and there are no tiebreakers. The first-place team gets a bye to the best-of-three finals, which begin Friday, with the second-place and third-place teams facing off in Thursday's semifinals.
As colleague John Hodge covers the men's side, here's a capsule look at how the women's teams have fared so far in Eight Ends.
FIRST END — TEAM EINARSON (4-0): Kerri Einarson sits at the top of the leaderboard as the lone undefeated team, with her Gimli, Man., squad looking sharp on the ice. Val Sweeting leads all thirds, shooting at an 89 per cent clip, while Einarson (86 per cent) and second Shannon Birchard (86 per cent) are second at their respective positions. Karlee Burgess (89 per cent) is tied for third among leads. Einarson also leads all players at plus-four in the positional plus/minus comparison, meaning she's outcurled her opposing skip by at least five percentage points in every game.
It's all building toward a must-see tilt between Einarson and Homan in Wednesday's round-robin finale. Funny how the schedule worked out like that.
SECOND END — TEAM HOMAN (3-1): Ottawa's Rachel Homan came flying out of the gate with a 16-5 rout over Kate Cameron and an 8-2 thumping over Halifax's own Christina Black. Homan is human, after all, and Kayla Skrlik earned the 8-7 extra-end victory Sunday night. That handed Homan her first loss to a Canadian team since Oct. 6, 2024, snapping a 32-game unbeaten streak against compatriots.
How did Homan respond? Right back to business Monday with another commanding effort, scoring three off the bat and five in the third end en route to a 12-5 triumph over Selena Sturmay.
Homan (87 per cent) and second Emma Miskew (89 per cent) top the charts at their positions, with Sarah Wilkes (93 per cent) tied with Team Brown's Samantha Fisher for first among leads. Tracy Fleury (87 per cent) sits second among thirds.
THIRD END — TEAM BLACK (2-2): Black is heating up on home ice. Her squad had the toughest schedule on paper to start against the top three teams based on the rankings, sustaining predictable losses to Einarson and Homan before pulling off a 7-3 win over Kaitlyn Lawes. A 9-4 victory over Corryn Brown on Monday brought Black to a level record.
Black's next two games against Skrlik and Sturmay will be critical — considering where all three teams are in the standings — and having the crowd on her team's side will be a boost.
The one stat Black will look to improve upon: she's given up the most stolen points (18).
FOURTH END — TEAM LAWES (2-2): After two wins to start, Lawes now has two losses to Black and Einarson to drop to .500. The Winnipeg team, skipped by third Selena Njegovan, also has the worst LSD tally of the 2-2 teams, which will need to improve. One of the last things you'd want is to have your Olympic dreams dashed because of pre-game draw shots for hammer.
FIFTH END — TEAM STURMAY (2-2): Sturmay, who secured the final spot in the event through the pre-trials, could easily be at 3-1 with the 8-7 extra-end loss to Lawes coming down to a measurement. The Edmonton team made quite the rebounding effort, trailing 5-1 after three and rallying to then tie it 6-6 with a steal of two in the eighth. That measurement may come back to haunt Sturmay with a logjam now at 2-2 and a less-than-ideal LSD total.
Sturmay is shooting well, third among skips at 80 per cent, with Danielle Schmiemann also in third place among all thirds at 84 per cent.
SIXTH END — TEAM SKRLIK (2-2): That's more like it for Skrlik. The Calgary club has had a disappointing season and opened with a 0-2 start in the trials, before turning things around with the impressive upset over Homan. Skrlik never trailed after scoring a deuce in the fourth end to take a 3-2 lead. It looked like Skrlik had Homan on the ropes after counting three in the ninth to hold a 7-4 advantage. You can never ease off the pedal against Homan, who matched right back with a three-ender to force the extra end. Skrlik stuck around with an open hit on her last in OT to hold for the much-needed victory.
Skrlik then scored two in the 10th to complete a 7-6 comeback victory over Cameron on Monday and is now right in the playoff mix. Having the best last stone draw (LSD) tally of the 2-2 teams is like having an extra win in your back pocket if they can keep that up.
SEVENTH END — TEAM BROWN (1-3): Brown will have to win out from here, but even that might not be enough, as the Kamloops, B.C., team is last in the LSD standings. Regardless, it's a tough task ahead with Homan on deck. Brown, who is last among all skips at 66 per cent, has scored the fewest points (16) and actually has as many points as she's surrendered via steals.
EIGHTH END — TEAM CAMERON (0-4): It's not looking good for the St. Adolphe, Man., team. Cameron has given up the most points (41) in the tournament with a points for/against of minus-20. The one thing that is working? The last stone draw challenge. Cameron sits first with a 76.4 total.
