(Photo by Emily Rogers)
Canada’s Team Brad Gushue placed fourth overall, after a 10-8 loss to Team Shuster of the United States in the men's bronze-medal game Friday (Nov. 1) afternoon at the Gary Moe Auto Group Sportsplex.
The loss marks the first time the Canadian men's team will not reach the podium at this event.
Down by one and without hammer in the 10th end, Canada did its best to set up a steal. However, the Americans had a draw to the four-foot for the win.
"I feel a whole lot better about this loss than yesterday (loss to Japan in the semifinals), because I felt like we threw a lot of good rocks. We didn't get the results that we probably deserved for some of our throws, but they played well and credit to them. They came out and played a strong game against us," Gushue said.
Although it’s a disappointing result for skip Gushue, vice-skip Mark Nichols, second Brendan Bottcher, lead Geoff Walker, alternate Adam Casey, coach Jeff Hoffart and national coach Jeff Stoughton, there were still positives to come out of the week for the team's new lineup featuring Bottcher at second, as it lays a foundation on which the team aims to improve.
"It was a really good first event. I think we have a few things we can build on, and I'm looking forward to the next one,” Bottcher said. "I thought the team dynamic was great out of the gate. We had a lot of fun throughout the course this week, which showed out on the ice. We put together a lot of really good games, so there's lots of positives."
Canada and the U.S.A. traded deuces in the opening part of the game until Team Shuster earned the upper hand in the fourth.
(Photo by Emily Rogers)
On Gushue's first, Canada faced a pair of opposition counters in the four-foot. An attempt to run an American guard into the house to remove everything, over-curled, and Canada only extracted one of the stones while leaving a biter on the side of the 12-foot. The error led to Team Shuster scoring three.
"The three-ender in four was obviously a big turnaround. We had a couple of mistakes on Geoff and Brendan's rocks and then [Team Shuster] executed very well in that end,” Gushue said. “They made every shot just about perfect, and we were a little unlucky on my runback that left that one biter. I made a decent roll on my last one, but needed to roll another half a rock.”
In the fifth end, Team Gushue only mustered a single. On Canada's first skip stone, Gushue ran a Canadian rock into two American ones while spilling the shooter to the side of the 12-foot behind cover. Team Shuster jammed a double and Canada had a runback to score two but rolled out on the attempt.
Anytime Canada attempted setting something up, the Americans countered with takeouts to control the game.
Down by two in the ninth end, Canada was facing four Team Shuster stones sprawled across the tee line.
Canada tried to lock something in to count, but all the U.S.A. had to do was blast away at anything Canada placed in the house. Canada was held to another single point heading into the 10th end.
The men's gold-medal game between China's Team Xiaoming Xu and Japan's Team Shinya Abe is scheduled for Saturday (Nov. 2) at 10 a.m.
In the women’s competition, Canada's Team Rachel Homan takes on South Korea's Team Eunji Gim in the gold-medal game Saturday at 3 p.m.
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