ON THE ROCKS: Idea of eliminating extra ends doesn’t sit well with Canadian curlers

It has been clear for more than a year now that the World Curling Federation is toying with the idea of replacing extra ends with a dramatic single draw to the button to decide tied games.

It’s an idea that has received more ridicule than intrigue and it was in the spotlight this past weekend when the rule was tested at Curling Canada’s PointsBet Invitational, in Fredericton, N.B.

“I do see it coming down the road,” said Marc Kennedy, a highly decorated curler who plays third for Edmonton’s Brendan Bottcher.

“Trying to eliminate extra ends is something that has been coming for a while.”

Rather than playing extra ends in the single-knockout tournament, teams each threw a draw to the button — on different sides of the sheet — to decide the winner. The team that would have had the hammer in an extra end got to choose which side of the sheet it wanted to throw on, which turned out to be a pretty big advantage.

It came into play numerous times during the tournament and left some curlers with a sour taste in their mouths.

“I don’t like it,” said six-time Canadian champion and Olympic gold medallist Jennifer Jones, who won the women’s title at the PointsBet Event.

“I’m still a traditionalist, so it’s hard for me to embrace change.”

The World Curling Federation put the idea of making the change on the table at last year’s annual general meeting but ultimately decided not to go down that road — yet. Instead, it chose to institute a “no-tick” rule, which took away some of the advantage of teams with the hammer in the late ends of games.

But if Curling Canada is testing a rule like this at one of its events, there’s surely a belief that this is a possibility for the future.

Curlers are grappling with the idea of completely changing how they approach the late ends of games in the coming years.

“From a strategy standpoint and how you approach the end, late, it certainly does change your mindset,” said Reid Carruthers, who won the men’s side of the PointsBet event.

“Knowing that if you just score your one point in the last end or you’re even up two coming home, likely you’re heading to a shootout, where you normally would have the hammer, it kinda changes things. You might give up a steal at times just to make sure you have the hammer, tied up, coming home.”

The truth is the WCF wants to make curling more marketable on an international level and a premium has been placed on fitting games into television time slots.

While eliminating extra ends certainly would help in that area, curlers have been using a different solution for years on the Grand Slam Tour.

“If we’re worried about time slots, we play an entire tour season with eight-end games,” Kennedy said. “As athletes, we’ve gotten used to it and we love it.

“Why is that not a change that is being considered for championship curling? If you’re worried about time slots, why not just drop it to eight ends instead of doing something like eliminating extra ends, which entirely changes the purity of the game?”

Kennedy, a three-time Olympian and 2010 gold medallist, seems somewhat resigned to the fact that this change could be coming down the pipe.

He hopes other changes are made in conjunction, for the benefit of the game.

“If they are going to go in this direction, with the draw to the button, I certainly hope that they would change the points system,” Kennedy said. “It should be three points for an all-out victory, two for a draw-to-the-button victory, one point for a draw-to-the-button loss. That type of model, so that the entire game isn’t based on a draw to the button at the very end.”

Like Jones, many of the curlers are purists. They understand attempts to grow the sport but there are limits to what they want to see in terms of changes.

Thirty years ago, curling was a completely different sport, but it started to change with the addition of the free-guard zone. That started with three rocks, evolved to four and now it’s five. It seems like there have been almost yearly changes since curling became an official Olympic sport in 1998.

“Personally I wish they wouldn’t touch extra ends,” Kennedy said. “I think it’s a very important part of the game, it’s a very important part of strategy. You want to be the team with the hammer as you’re going to an extra end and you call the game accordingly. It will change the game.

“And you know what? We’ve tinkered with our game so much over the last decade, I would just love to see it settle for a while. Let’s just let it rest. Every year we keep making all these big changes to accommodate the fans and accommodate television. Sometimes I wonder what’s actually wrong with our game.”

While Canadians make up the majority of the curlers in the world, especially at the elite level, there’s a sense that they don’t get much of a chance to weigh in on important rule changes like those that are being discussed.

And it’s not just the curlers in this country who are resistant to certain changes.

“I find it really unfortunate that the athletes don’t have more of a say in their own sport,” Kennedy said. “Curling is falling victim sometimes to bringing in more fans and accommodate the TV, but at the end of the day, sometimes it just confuses fans.

“I’ve got a 68-year-old mother who loves watching curling but every week comes to me and says ‘What’s with this rule change? What are the rules this week? Why are we doing this?’ You’re alienating some of your long-term traditional fans as well. I think they need to be really careful.”

Twyman@postmedia.com