MOOSE JAW -- The night prior to the first practices at the World Men’s Curling Championship saw a host of players from the Moose Jaw Curling Club take the ice at Temple Gardens Centre to get a feel for how the hockey-to-curling conversion had turned out.
Their assessment was that the icemakers had done their job and then some.
The ice had plenty of swing and allowed for shots with a ton of curl while at the same time carrying speed -- exactly the kind of conditions that make for quality shotmaking when you have the best curlers on the planet taking part in an event.
Brad Jacobs and his Team Canada foursome took the ice in their pre-tournament practice on Friday afternoon, and things lived up to advance billing, even if it’ll take a bit of time to get perfectly used to the curl and speed.
“It feels like curling ice,” Jacobs said. “It's always that way at the beginning of the week and it's really important to get as comfortable as you can early. You can feel the rocks are a little sharp, it wasn't curling a whole lot today, so ice reading and getting comfortable with the environment and the conditions is really a big team effort. Towards the end of practice there, I think we got a lot more comfortable and we liked what we saw.”
While they only had an hour to work on things, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Team Canada was quickly getting a handle on what they’ll be looking at in the days to come.
“We can kind of already tell,” Jacobs said. “It feels weight sensitive, feels line sensitive, release sensitive. Brushing is such an important part of the game right now and we're fortunate enough to have two of the best in the world on our brooms. Once we get comfortable, I think we're going to do a lot of great things and make a lot of shots and entertain the fans.”
One thing that’s for certain is Team Canada will have a ton of support at the event. Tickets for the 4,500-seat Temple Gardens Centre are all but sold out for the opening draw on Saturday at 2 p.m., which will feature Canada taking on Japan.
“I think it's going to be incredible,” Jacobs said. “I really do anticipate a lot of support for our team. A lot of people from a lot of different communities around Moose Jaw are probably going to be making the trek here to throw on the maple leaf and hopefully they're flying their Canada flags proud. It's our job to entertain and bring them in as much as we can and hopefully make it as exciting as we can for them. That's what we plan to do.”
One thing that’s for certain is Team Canada will need that support and then some.
The field for the World Men’s Curling Championship is once again stacked, with multiple former and current World and Olympic champions in the field, meaning it’ll take an utterly stellar performance to come away with the title at the end of it all.
Asked what it’s like to have targets on their back as one of the favourites, Jacobs pointed out that they weren’t the only ones in that situation.
“We've got targets on other people's backs, too,” he said. “We know that there's not an easy game and we're not the only ones with targets on our backs here. But what a privilege to be able to say that. That's quite the compliment. So we do expect to get everyone's best game. That's what we want, we just have to outplay them and that's what we intend to do.”
Such is the case when you have a field of the best on the planet vying to become the best in the world.
“You could probably host this event five, six, seven weeks in a row and you might be able to get five, six, seven different winners,” Jacobs said. “So we're hoping that it's our week.”
