1982 BRIER — Part 3: Let the games begin

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This article was published 11/08/2022 (1394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In terms of curtain raisers, those at the Keystone Centre couldn’t have had a better one than what they witnessed in the opening draw of the 1982 Labatt Brier on Sunday, March 7.

Over on Sheet A — one of five that were in use during the week instead of the four that are commonplace today — Mel Logan and his Manitoba champions from Souris were up against tournament favourite Al Hackner’s Northern Ontario rink.

“When we got our purple hearts at the Winnipeg Arena (after winning the provincial title) I think I realized then that we were going to the Brier, but it didn’t really set in until we stepped on the ice to go against Hackner,” Manitoba third Doug Armour said. “That was quite a moment for us.

“It was too bad that the rink wasn’t twice as big as I think we could have filled it up. Everyone was so excited for us being there and there were so many people that we knew around here that we’re going to be going to the games … they all really got behind us.”

After giving up a deuce to Hackner in the opening end, the Brier debutants took control as Logan picked up a big three-ender in the second frame and stole another point in the third to take a 4-2 lead over the second-place finisher at the last two national championships.

Both rinks traded points through eight ends, with Manitoba holding a narrow 6-5 advantage after Hackner only got one point after missing a chance to score three.

In the ninth, Logan wrecked on a takeout to give Northern Ontario a steal of one to force a 6-6 tie.

Logan had a chance to redeem himself in the 10th, as he just needed to get closer to the pin than the shot stone of Hackner’s in the eight-foot for a single point or knock it out of the rings for a pair.

“I didn’t want to take as much as ice we did to start with, but Doug said, ‘Oh it will draw here,’’’ Logan said. “At the same time, looking back under the circumstances … I think a person has a tendency to maybe overthrow it (the rock) and I probably threw it about 15 to 20 feet heavier than what I needed to.

“In watching the shot back (Logan has the game on tape) I actually had enough to kill the (Hackner) rock at the second hog line, but because of my weight, it kind of straightened out and backed off a little bit. If it had just stayed where it was … it did have enough to kill it at one time.”

Instead, Logan’s final stone only grazed Hackner’s rock and Northern Ontario had stolen another point to take a 7-6 win.

“That was quite a letdown for us,” Armour said.

“We had played really well and had the game in our hands.

“Mel’s last may have been a shade high and maybe a hair heavy, but it just hit a straight spot on the ice and we only ticked their rock over.”

Even though he had come away with the win, Hackner was quick to point out how well Logan’s rink played in the post-game scrum.

“They out-curled us most of the game and forced us into tough shots,” Hackner said to the Brandon Sun’s Jack Gibson. “But it all came down to one shot.”

Manitoba’s first contest set the stage for what was an up-and-down round-robin for the Souris squad.

Busy Hosts

As the local rink, Logan, Armour, second Lloyd Lang and lead Allan Granger were not only the centre of attention whenever they took to the ice, but they were also the hottest committee away from the rink.

“Everyone wanted a piece of us,” Logan said. “If there was a drawback to the whole thing it was that everyone wanted to host us at their functions and it was actually a little bit too much at times. All of the other rinks were hosted twice during the week, and I think we were hosted at least five times.”

“The biggest adjustment for us was that time off the ice,” Armour added. “We loved being on the ice and being at all the functions, but the problem was there wasn’t a whole lot of time to talk over our games. Instead, we’re basically changing into dress clothes and things like that.”

While their schedule was quite a bit different than the rest of the field, the atmosphere that came with playing at the Keystone Centre was something that the rink looked forward to.

“The arena was buzzing for the whole week,” Armour said. “Everywhere we went walking around town, people stopped to talk to us or they would come up and pat us on the back. It was really wonderful … I’ll never forget it.”

“At the same time, everyone is expecting you to curl great,” Logan added. “We did to a point, but if I had made two or three more shots of my own in the round-robin … we would have been 8-3 and found ourselves at the top of the standings.”

One of those shots that Logan would like back came in the afternoon draw on Tuesday, March 9, as his 3-1 squad went up against Brent Giles’ 3-0 rink from British Columbia.

With the game tied at five in the 10th end, he just need a piece of the 12-foot on a draw to get the win, but his shot sailed straight through the house.

“I still don’t know why my last rock slid like it did,” Logan said. “It had almost stopped when it was in the four-foot, but it just wouldn’t stop and went four or five inches too far.”

“We were lucky in a sense on that one,” Giles added. “I always thought that last one Mel threw was a bit weird. It was almost like (the rock) caught a bit of a downhill in the ice and kept going. It didn’t like it was going to go through … but it did.”

Logan and his teammates had a little bit of everything happen to them in Brandon.

They won a 6-5 double-extra-end affair with New Brunswick’s Charlie Sullivan, nearly blew a five-point lead before edging out Alberta’s Gary Morken 8-7, cruised past Nova Scotia’s Lowell Goulden 12-3 and made a draw to the four-foot in the final end to beat Newfoundland’s Mark Noseworthy 4-3.

On the other hand, they also got roughed up 10-5 by Quebec’s Don Aitken and were stunned by the Yukon/Northwest Territories’ Paul Hunter in a 9-3 decision.

“Back then, it seemed like some of the teams were a bit weaker, but you couldn’t take anyone for granted,” Armour said.

“The way things were that week, anyone could beat anyone. As the final records showed, it was a pretty even field.”

Heading into the final two draws of the round-robin on Friday, March 12, Manitoba was in an absolute dogfight to get into the playoffs as they were one of seven rinks with a shot at earning third place.

While they were battling to keep their hopes at a title alive, the rink that many expected to go straight into Sunday’s final was entering a rough patch.

Favourites Stumble

Following his great escape routine over Logan in the opening draw, Hackner was hardly tested through his next seven games.

Heading into the second last day of round-robin play, the rink from the Fort William Curling Club in Thunder Bay, Ont., — which included third Rick Lang, second Bob Nicol and lead Bruce Kennedy — was already assured of a spot in the playoffs with an 8-0 mark.

“We were on a bit of a roll but we weren’t really dominating and we weren’t playing at our best,” Lang said. “At one point we sat down at looked at the statistics, which were just in their early stages around then, and we were in sixth place overall but with a perfect record.

“I just remember thinking, ‘We’re doing well, but we’re not playing all that great.’”

In the marquee matchup of the tournament up to that point, Hackner suffered his first loss of the week as Giles outlasted him in a 7-6 double extra end affair on Thursday, March 11.

That contest was decided on a great freeze by Giles on Hackner’s shot stone in the four-foot, which came shortly after his final rock in the 11th end rolled out on a hit-and-stick attempt.

Things didn’t get much better the following morning for the Northern Ontario champions, as they gave up four unanswered points in the final four ends to lose a 7-5 decision to Ontario’s Bruce Munro.

They then fell 6-5 in extra ends to Alberta a few hours later to end up in second place overall with an 8-3 mark and having to play in Saturday’s semifinal.

“We had three mediocre performances to end the round-robin, but those other teams played well against us,” Lang said.

“Now the doubts that we had coming into the event were totally magnified. To drop from getting a bye to the final to a spot in the semifinal was concerning, to say the least.”

Instead, the quartet from the Vancouver Curling Club was heading straight to the championship game on Sunday.

Leading the Pack

The 1982 Brier wasn’t the first go-around at Canada’s men’s curling championship for Brent Giles and his brother Brad, who played lead.

They had been to the event with their other brother Brock in St. John’s a decade earlier as members of the Bernie Sparkes’ rink, who ended up with a 5-5 mark and in a tie for sixth place.

When the 1981-82 season began, Giles was in his fourth campaign with his current squad, which featured Greg Monkman at third and Al Roemer at second.

“We were a pretty good team given the rules at the time,” Giles said. “There was no free-guard zone then so we could toss it up and down like the rest of them, but we were also pretty balanced.

“There wasn’t really a tour like there is now but we played in a lot of events in British Columbia and Alberta. We had beaten a few really good teams to get to the provincials and I felt like we were playing pretty well at that point of the year.”

Giles punched his ticket to Brandon with an 8-5 triumph over Bert Gretzinger’s rink, who The Province newspaper in Vancouver had called the hottest team in the country after he had captured $48,000 ($133,197 in today’s money) on the cashspiel circuit, and had won 26 of his last 27 games.

“Bert was probably the favourite going into it,” said Giles, who golfs with Gretzinger three to four times a week. “He had brought in Glen Jackson at third, who had just come off playing with Paul Gowsell, and they were a very experienced team.

“I think it really just came down to a couple of shots here and there in the final game that ended up being the difference against those guys.”

As they arrived at the Keystone Centre, Giles found himself going up against a bunch of unfamiliar faces, as they had only crossed paths with Morken and Saskatchewan’s Brad Heidt at bonspiels.

The bright lights of the Brier didn’t seem to faze them though, as they would end up leading the way with a 9-2 mark, with their only blemishes coming in a 4-2 contest with Heidt and a 7-3 setback to Aitken.

In addition to their dramatic wins over Manitoba and Northern Ontario, another moment that stood out for Giles was in the fifth draw against the Yukon/Northwest Territories, as he made a shot through a narrow port to score four on his way to an 8-7 win over Hunter.

“We were kind of hoping that we would make the playoffs before we even set out to Brandon,” Giles said. “We figured that if we could get a read on the ice early, that would help our chances, and that ended up being how it worked out. We got on it for the weight that we were throwing and we were also hitting the broom, which is obviously pretty important.

“Back then, the ice wasn’t quite as good as it is now for the guys that are out on the circuit as the icemakers have had many years to perfect it under a lot of different conditions. The ice itself in the Keystone was very good and I think a lot of that had to do with the conducive conditions in Brandon that week.”

Giles’ officially clinched first place in the final round-robin draw as a result of his 6-5 win over New Brunswick and Northern Ontario’s setback against Alberta.

As it turned out, his triumph was critical in determining who would have a chance at the last playoff spot.

Battle for Third

When the sun rose on Friday, March 12, the race for third place in the standings was clear as mud.

Manitoba and New Brunswick were tied at 5-4, while Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were close behind at 5-5 and Alberta, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan were still mathematically alive at 4-5.

In fact, only Ontario, Quebec and Yukon/Northwest Territories were on the outside looking in.

“That just shows you how close the field was and what the calibre of play was like for the conditions that we had,” Noseworthy said.

“There wasn’t a ton of mistakes out there, but I think the average for the teams was somewhere around the low 80s. If a team curls that at the Brier now, they are in last place. That just shows you how much has changed.”

The playoff picture had cleared up a little bit following the morning draw, with Logan cruising to an 11-5 win over Jenkins to end his hopes of playing on the weekend, while Sullivan brought a halt to Heidt’s chances with a 10-9 extra end victory.

Morken was also knocked out from the race for third place with a 5-3 loss to Giles.

Heading into the afternoon draw, Manitoba and New Brunswick were still tied for the last playoff spot at 6-4, with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia still behind them at 5-5.

The Maritime deadlock was solved when Noseworthy eliminated Goulden from contention with a 7-5 victory.

“Looking back on it now, if we knew what we were doing, we probably could have won a couple of more games,” said Noseworthy, who curled with Randy Perry, Eugene Trickett and John Wheeler on his St. John’s rink. “Back then, there were a lot of hits up and down the sheet and as far as we were concerned, we could hit with anybody.

“However, there were several teams that had more experience with having rocks in play. Those guys would do different things and have different strategies that we hadn’t seen yet. I don’t know if we struggled with that, but I don’t know if we made the best decisions sometimes, though those are things you learn with experience as we were still a pretty raw team back then.”

Meanwhile, Logan’s rink found itself in a close battle with Heidt.

After they blanked the first four ends, the teams traded deuces in the fifth and sixth frames.

Saskatchewan got a single point in the eighth to take a 3-2 advantage, only to see Manitoba even things up with a takeout in the ninth.

“When Mel tied it up, it was probably the most bone-chilling moment of the Brier for us,” Heidt said.

“The crowd just roared and the cheers went right through my body.”

In the end, it was Heidt who had the final say as he picked up a pair of points with the hammer in the 10th to take a 5-3 victory and put Logan’s playoff hopes on the ropes.

“I won’t be very popular around here if New Brunswick wins,” Heidt said to the Brandon Sun’s Jack Gibson after the game. “If they do, I think I’ll just quickly head for the dressing room.”

At that point, New Brunswick had the hammer in the 10th end against British Columbia with the game all tied up at four.

On his last shot, Sullivan was looking to make a short hit-and-raise on one of Giles’ rocks in the eight-foot, but his attempt went sailing wide and he gave up a steal of two to lose by a score of 6-4.

As a result, there was a three-way tie for third between Manitoba, New Brunswick and Newfoundland at 6-5.

“B.C. is a fine bunch of fellows,” Armour said to Gibson after watching the final shot from the stands.

Thanks to their wins over the Maritime rinks earlier in the week, Logan and his teammates would be able to rest on Friday night as Sullivan and Noseworthy battled it out to see who had to go up against the tournament hosts the following morning.

The round-robin was over. Now the real games were about to begin.

» See Part 4 of the five-part series in Friday’s edition of the Brandon Sun.

» lpunkari@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @lpunkari