Thinking time, tightening the game to eight ends, the five-rock rule and the no-tick zone were all concepts first implemented at the top level of the sport in the Grand Slam of Curling. What's next?
As part of the recently formed competition committee, Brent Laing, John Morris, Jennifer Jones and Pierre Charette have been tasked by The Curling Group, owners and operators of the Grand Slam of Curling, with finding ways for how the series can improve the level of play and reach new heights by appealing to a broader audience and a younger demographic.
Even with their vast wealth of curling knowledge and experience, the four are also listening to all stakeholders, curlers, and fans for any input. Absolutely nothing is off the table at this point.
Laing was a recent guest on the Broom Brothers podcast and mentioned to host John Cullen that an old coach recommended to him the book "Will It Make the Boat Go Faster?" about the British men's eight rowing team's dramatic turnaround from futility to Olympic fame. Basically, before the crew would say yes or no to any idea, they would ask themselves: Will it make the boat go faster? When the answer was yes, they'd give it a shot before ruling it out.
That's the kind of mentality Laing is applying to his new role.
"If there's an idea, and we say, 'Would this make it more interesting? Would it help make it faster? Would it draw a new crowd? Would it make it more entertaining?' Then we'll entertain it and talk about it," said Laing, who won three world championships and 16 Grand Slam titles during his playing career. "Not saying we'll implement it, but that's really the basis of it."
REDUCING THINKING TIME?
Laing stressed that they're not trying to ruin curling — anything they attempt will be with the best intentions of improving the sport — but one of the key areas they're looking into is fitting the game in a two-hour broadcast window. Reducing the number of ends is one way to accomplish that. Still, Laing also discussed cutting down thinking time as a potential solution, based on his experience as both a coach with Team McEwen and a colour commentator.
"Watching from the broadcast booth and coaching the last couple of years, it was so obvious of all the time we waste out there that you don't really necessarily notice," Laing said. "If you pick up 30 seconds an end on either side, a minute an end, that's 15 minutes off, 16 minutes off the broadcast and that gets you down closer to that two-hour window.
"We don't want to fundamentally change the game, but at the same time, if a big change made it super appealing to a network or to a sponsor or to a new demographic of some sort of fan, then we'd be silly not to look at it."
EXTRA ENDS, TIEBREAKERS UNDER REVIEW
Eliminating extra ends is another idea Laing mentioned that's "probably going to happen pretty early on this year," where if a game is tied after eight ends, teams would instead draw to the button to determine the winner.
"It's almost like the NHL and a lot of the other pro sports, three (points) for a win, two for an overtime win, one for an overtime loss, and it becomes a shootout, a draw to the button, and is that exciting to watch? Well, again, I don't have to throw it or sweep it, so yeah, I think it is," Laing said.
"Maybe we're wrong. We'll try it, and it's like, no, that didn't work, and we'll be the first to say that was wrong. We screwed up. That made it worse, not better, and that goes in the garbage, so that's definitely part of it."
That kind of points system could also help another area the competition committee is focused on improving formats, specifically ones that eliminate the reliance on tiebreakers.
"We'd rather come up with a format that, you know that if you win this game, you go forward and at some point you lose a game and you go home, rather than you win your last game, and then you're looking around, you're adding up all these numbers, and the fans are like, 'I have no idea who's in, who's out, what's happening,'" Laing said.
“So, there are some formats, and I think we're going to try maybe even in the second Slam, where it's different. There's still some pools because, again, the powers that be have decided that the matchups are important, that they want to promote Homan-Einarson on Thursday night or Mouat-Whyte on Wednesday night or whatever those big matchups are. But then how do we get that to a place where it doesn't require tiebreakers on Saturday morning and we're not sending home teams without having played for their life?
"I think it's going to open some eyes and there's gonna be a lot of feedback, positive and negative, probably mostly negative in the beginning, but that's again the whole idea."
AIR OF INTRIGUE AT AMJ MASTERS
New ideas are already being implemented for the first Grand Slam of Curling event of the season, the AMJ Masters, which takes place from Sept. 23-28 at the Western Fair Sports Centre in London, Ont. Laing said Charette came up with a pretty cool format where, upon the conclusion of pool play, teams will play a crossover game based on their win-loss records, e.g. the top-place team in Pool A will play the fourth-place team in Pool C, the second-place team in Pool A will play the third-place team in Pool C, and vice versa. The same goes for Pool B against Pool D teams.
Although the crossover portion has been done before, those matchups were pre-determined and based on world rankings, not necessarily who's hot and who's not that particular week. Now, there's an air of intrigue heading into the final day of round-robin play.
"I don't even hate the idea of playing a three-game round robin and that seeds you one to 16, and then we have a sweet 16 draw where it's single elimination. There's nothing off the table," Laing said.
"It's a pro sport, it's a business now, so yes, fair comes into it, but none of the pro leagues are fair. The NHL's not fair. It depends on what division you're in. Major League Baseball is not fair. The National League is way better than the American League. They don't play everybody the same number of games. It's about marketing, it's about selling the sport, it's about growing the sport around the world. If the answer is it will help us do that, or it might help us do that, you're probably gonna see some."
NEW RULES FOR ROCK LEAGUE?
The Grand Slam of Curling will also serve as a testing ground for rules during the inaugural season of Rock League, the newest venture from The Curling Group that's set to debut in April.
"Even the no extra end, I would be shocked if there's extra ends in Rock League. I don't think I'm speaking out of school there. I just don't think it's going to be a thing, so it needs to be tried somewhere. We have an opportunity to maybe do that at the Slams," Laing said.
Besides, the cream will continue to rise to the top.
"The best players are still going to be the best players, the best teams are still going to win most of the stuff, but we hope we can attract some new fans, encourage the younger players to keep at it and see Rock League as a chance to maybe, 'I can make a career out of curling, at least for 10 years, eight years. Maybe I can make some money,' because that hasn't really been a thing up until now," Laing said.
Rock League will consist of six franchises — two based in Canada, two based in Europe, one in the United States and one in Asia — with five men's players and five women's players on each team. It's the vision of The Curling Group CEO Nic Sulsky to elevate curling into the realm of a true professional sport and give younger curlers something to aspire to.
"(The Curling Group) looked at it, and they were like, what are we missing here? How come this sport isn't way bigger, way more marketable? Why aren't there superstars? Why aren't there pros? We've been asking those questions for years. I don't have any of the answers, but I can tell you, Nic and The Curling Group, they do, and they're going to ruffle some feathers, but that's really the why," Laing said.
"We can keep going the way we are, and the Olympics is great, but we're losing a lot of great players. We're losing that youth group from juniors to universities and colleges. As those programs are getting better and better, we're getting almost worse and worse at getting those players from that level into the World Curling Tour and the Grand Slams. Part of that is because … there's no carrot at the end."
Laing said that since the announcement of Rock League, there have been numerous emails from young curlers who have been thankful they now have something to chase and don't have to quit the sport.
"It's really hard now to be at the top level. It's impossible almost to be at the top level and have a regular job," Laing said. "I think the why is because curling deserves more, because curling can be so much bigger around the world, especially. We can pretend like Canada owns curling, and we'll always pretend we do, but if it's going to grow, it has to grow in the U.S. and has to grow internationally, and there's all of this demand for it. We just haven't ever presented it properly."
The Broom Brothers podcast, with John Cullen and Robbie Doherty, is available on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
