With his last stone in the eighth end Saturday afternoon, Brad Gushue watched his draw attempt crawl past the four-foot, past the eight-foot and beyond Kevin Koe’s stone.
And with that, he watched his chances of winning the semifinal over Koe at the Home Hardware Canada Cup in Estevan slip away a little bit more.
Koe won 7-5, but after that shot, the game was 5-5. Koe would steal another in the ninth and then another in the 10th to give Koe the berth in Sunday evening’s final against Brad Jacobs.
“I don’t know the last time I’ve seen him do that, especially against me in a big game,” said Koe of Gushue’s miss. “He doesn’t miss those and that brought us back to even. We played a great ninth and even played a good end in seven to get a deuce.”
The game felt a bit like the 2017 Tim Hortons Brier final between the two skips, in which Gushue went up 5-1, Koe came back late to tie and then with the hammer, Gushue won in the 10th end.
“It felt really similar to that one actually,” said Koe’s lead, Ben Hebert. “We’re not going to quit. We’ve got a lot of improving to do, you saw that in the first half. But for our first year together as a team I’m really impressed with the guys… We’ve got a lot of work to do still. That’s not a textbook win where we’re going to think to ourselves that we outplayed the other team. We got lucky today and we’re fortunate to be in the final.”
Hebert felt there was both a difference in strategy and execution in the second half.
“We had to go balls to-the-wall a little bit and risk the game a couple times because they had the big lead, so we had to change our strategy for that,” Hebert said. “We just missed the shot in five or we had the two or three steal wrapped up again early… But we’re playing with house money here, boys. We’re flying now. Kevin makes that shot in the tiebreaker, we sneak out that one. We’re happy.”
Gushue, meanwhile, could only think about his missed draw in the eighth end.
“They made a lot of good shots and put a lot of pressure on us but obviously my missed draw in eight was what cost us the game,” said Gushue. “The steal in nine got a little sloppy but we conceded one pretty late in that end… I had a shot to win and it was a tough one but it was certainly one I expected to make. It just curled for some reason when my other peels weren’t curling.”
The women’s semfinal is on deck for tonight, with Rachel Homan taking on Jennifer Jones at 7 p.m.
