The two-week period between the end of the Brier and the start of the world curling championships usually wouldn't be the best time for a skip to tell the rest of his rink he didn't want them back next year.
In probably the weirdest development in Canadian sports in 2014, skip Kevin Koe had to deal with news leaking out that he was replacing lead Nolan Thiessen, second Carter Rycroft and third Pat Simmons - who had a few days earlier helped guide Koe to his second Brier title - for next season's play.
Replacing them would be the front end from Kevin Martin's rink - lead Ben Hebert and second Marc Kennedy - and the former second from Glenn Howard's championship rink, Brent Laing.
See you later Nolan, Carter and Pat. Nice knowing you! Oh, and thanks for the Brier wins. Couldn't have done it without you guys.
Only time will tell if Koe's move - at the start of the newest four-year cycle leading to the Olympic Games in Â鶹ÊÓƵ Korea in 2018 - will pay off or will be akin to trading Bobby Orr for a bag of hockey pucks and a roll of tape.
"It was not an easy decision," Koe told The Canadian Press. "But I felt the timing was good personally for me - just with the next Olympic cycle coming up - to make a change."
Thiessen agreed it was time for a change. "Teams just kind of run their course," Thiessen told CP. "We probably - even though we won the Brier this year - we were starting to get towards the line of maybe running its course. Kevin had a great opportunity. That's a great team that he's setting up."
With team chemistry somewhat strained, Koe and Co. went to the world championships in Beijing, China and tanked late in the week, finishing second in the round-robin, losing the 1-2 game, the semi-final game and then the bronze-medal game. Norway's Thomas Ulsrud won gold.
The three exiled members of the Koe crew may end up with the last laugh. New Canadian Curling Association rules say the Brier winner returns automatically to compete in the following year's event. With Koe now having three new members, the old three - Simmons, Rycroft and Thiessen - have that automatic spot in the Brier. All they need to do is find a skip. And there are a few available: Kevin Martin, Jeff Stoughton, Dave Nedohin, John Morris, to name four.
The curling off-season is going to be very interesting.
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