Four Sask. players named to Canada world junior hockey championship team
Dec 14, 2024
Berkly Catton, Brayden Yager, Caden Price and Tanner Howe were all named.
The drought in Saskatchewan will continue.
Brad Gushue beat Colton Flasch 9-7 in the 3-4 Page playoff game at the Tim Hortons Brier on Saturday, eliminating the Saskatchewan champions from the Canadian men’s curling championship in Lethbridge.
A team from Saskatchewan hasn’t won the Brier title since Rick Folk turned the trick in 1980.
In his first Brier appearance as a skip, Flasch went 6-2 in the round-robin and then knocked off the Regina-based Wild Card #2 team skipped by Matt Dunstone in a tiebreaker.
Flasch and his Saskatoon Nutana team of Catlin Schneider, Kevin Marsh and Daniel Marsh beat Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs in a playoff game, but lost to Alberta’s Kevin Koe in a Page playoff qualifier.
That dropped Flasch into the 3-4 game against the Wild Card #1 team skipped by Gushue.
The teams went back and forth in Saturday’s contest and were tied 2-2 after three ends and 5-5 after seven. After forcing Gushue to take one in the eighth, Flasch made a soft tapback for two in the ninth.
Flasch buried a rock in the four-foot with his final shot of the 10th, but Gushue made a long angle raise takeout for three and the win.
Gushue’s team is down to just three players for the playoffs; third Mark Nichols tested positive for COVID on Friday.
Gushue advances to Sunday’s semifinal against the loser of Saturday evening’s game between Koe and Team Canada’s Brendan Bottcher. The winner of the Koe-Bottcher contest advances directly to Sunday’s final.