Kevin Martin needed “a smoke and mirrors win” over Jamie King to get there, but he’s in Thursday’s 6:30 p.m. A Event final against Kevin Koe at the Boston Pizza Cup Alberta men’s curling championship at Leduc.
For the third straight year, the two heavyweight teams – and top two seeded teams in this championship – will meet in the game, which sends the winner into the Page Playoff 1-2 game with hammer in the first end and choice of rocks. Koe edged Martin 6-5 in the A final last year, but lost 7-6 to Martin two years ago.
The winner of the A final has gone on to win the provincial title each of the past five years since Alberta adopted the current 12-team format.
To get there, Martin had to hang on long enough against King to get to an extra end and pull out the win in his semifinal Thursday morning at a chilly Sobeys Arena in the Leduc Recreation Centre. His Saville Centre rink of John Morris, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert was down 4-1 after four ends – although it could have been much worse – yet rallied to tie the game 5-5 in the eighth end. King had the hammer in the 11th end, but skip rock thrower Blake MacDonald wasn’t able to make a difficult raise-takeout for shot rock after Martin made a hit-and-roll takeout to sit two in the four-foot.
Meanwhile, Koe and his Calgary/Moose Jaw/Edmonton team of Pat Simmons, Carter Rycroft and Nolan Thiessen won their semifinal 5-2 over Brent Bawel, with Tom Appelman throwing last rock.
