What an NCAA rule change might mean for junior hockey in Sask.
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Previously, WHL players were declared ineligible to play NCAA hockey in the U.S.
Matt Dunstone’s rink remained winless after Tuesday’s action at the 2021 Tim Hortons Curling Trials at SaskTel Centre.
Dunstone and teammates Colton Lott, Kirk Muyres and Dustin Kidby lost 9-7 to Ontario’s John Epping during the afternoon draw, dropping the Regina-based team’s record at the Canadian Olympic trials to 0-4.
“It sucks, obviously,” Dunstone said after the game. “(We) just let one slip away.”
Once again, Dunstone was unable to come up with the shots when they mattered the most, curling 70 per cent on Tuesday after curling 61 per cent, 81 per cent and 63 per cent in the previous three games.
Dunstone’s team is the only winless entry in the men’s competition.
Facing a must-win situation, Dunstone led 4-1 after four ends and 5-3 after six, but Epping scored three in the seventh after Dunstone picked his open draw to take a 6-5 lead.
After Dunstone put up a deuce in the eighth to reclaim the lead, Epping replied with a deuce of his own in the ninth end after a measurement confirmed the second point.
With a one-point deficit and holding the hammer in the final end, Dunstone missed his runback double for the win and instead handed Epping the win when he only contacted one of the stones.
“(That’s) the way it’s been going,” Dunstone said. “I missed that last shot by half an inch too. That sums it up perfect.”
The Ontario-based Epping stole one in the final end to improve to 2-2.
Dunstone’s second, Kirk Muyres, said this loss was particularly painful because the team felt it deserved a better fate.
“That one hurts. That one stings,” he said. “When you put together enough to win and you get on that roll and you don’t get the one you needed, that’s a disappointing one.”
The loss all but assures Dunstone will fail to be one of the three teams to qualify for the Trial playoffs on the weekend.
Muyres refuses to give in to that attitude, hoping the team can win its final four games and make the standings interesting by the end of the week.
“We’re going to regroup tonight and come out tomorrow morning, come out firing and play spoiler the rest of the way,” Muyres said.
“I guess stranger things have happened — 4-and-4 might do it if everyone beats the (crap) out of each other, so who knows?”
“I’m just not making enough, plain and simple. I have it at times and I don’t at times. That’s just the way curling is,” Dunstone said.
In the other games Tuesday afternoon: Newfoundland and Labrador’s Brad Gushue improved his first-place record to 4-0 with a 7-6, extra-end victory over Ontario’s Brad Jacobs (3-1); Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher got his first win in four games with a 10-2 triumph over Manitoba’s Mike McEwen (2-1); and, Manitoba’s Jason Gunnlaugson downed Ontario’s Tanner Horgan 11-6, leaving both teams with 1-2 records.