Assiniboia welcomes Weyburn Red Wings with open arms during ammonia shutdown
13h ago
Billets were found for all Red Wings players in just four hours.
Curling Canada has to fix its national championships. Again.
Watching the 16-team Scotties Tournament of Hearts has proven this newest format simply does not work.
With respect to my colleague, Jamie Nye, who insisted we wait until the playoffs to judge, this is the most tedious, bland women’s curling championship ever. There are too many teams and, worse, too many teams who shouldn’t be there.
Curling Canada’s intentions were honourable: it wanted to have every province and every territory represented. It also decided that Canada’s biggest province should have two teams, one from Ontario and one from Northern Ontario. And to help with marketing the event, the returning champions were supposed to be there as Team Canada.
There used to be 12 teams vying for a national championship, but critics thought that was unfair. So Curling Canada used a four-team playoff to determine the final qualifiers. That didn’t work either, but it was better than this.