By Jonathan Brazeau
MEDICINE HAT, Alta. —Halloween may have passed, but spooky season continues in the Grand Slam of Curling presented by Molson Canadian.
From Pablo Lachat-Couchepin burning a rock in a shootout, to Tanner Horgan wiping out on the ice (and he wasn't the only one, as we'll see later), to Sofia Scharback winning a game in a double shootout, stranger things are happening this week at the P&H Masters.
It shouldn't come as a surprise then that we saw our first double blank violation since the rule was created one year ago. Each team is allowed to blank only once per game, with a second blank at any other point in the match resulting in a loss of the hammer — regardless of whether it was intentional or not.
After Team Grant Hardie blanked the fifth end with a 3-2 lead Thursday against Team Kevin Koe, the Scottish squad couldn't afford a repeat in the sixth.
Ross Whyte, who throws last rocks for Hardie, looked to score by bumping their own stone to eliminate Koe's buried shot rock. It was a double whammy, though, as their shooter remained outside of the house, and their raised rock rolled right out of the rings for the second blank.
It wasn't the only odd moment of the end.
Earlier, Team Koe second Aaron Sluchinski took a spill on the ice while sweeping a stone.
The second blank flipped the hammer over to Koe, who scored two in the seventh end to take a 4-3 lead.
That could have been costly. Fortunately for Whyte, he had a simple open draw for a deuce coming home to secure the 5-4 victory and a playoff berth as Team Hardie qualified with an unblemished 3-0 record.
Koe's Canadian club dropped to 0-3 and was eliminated from contention.
With one more day of preliminary play plus the playoffs and potential tiebreakers, what could possibly be next?
