Alberta’s Thomas Scoffin won his ninth consecutive game to clinch first place in the Canadian junior men’s curling championship Thursday night at Fort McMurray.
With the win came a berth in Saturday’s 5 p.m. final.
Scoffin and his Saville Centre rink of Dylan Gousseau, Landon Bucholz and his twin brother Bryce defeated Nova Scotia’s Stuart Thompson 7-5 and Manitoba’s Matt Dunstone 8-3 to finish round-robin play with a 9-1 record.
“Saturday night, it’s really just about controlling your nerves,” said Landon, who won last year’s world junior championship with Bryce while playing for Brendan Bottcher. “You’ve practised all year and all your life for it, so you just have to settle down and throw like you practise. I’m so pumped. It’s really exciting. That was a fun last game to play.”
Nova Scotia (8-2) also locked up a playoff berth with a 7-5 win over Ontario’s Aaron Squires (7-3). Ontario will play a tiebreaker for the third and final playoff spot at 1 p.m. Friday against either Manitoba or Saskatchewan’s Brady Scharback (Saskatoon). Saskatchewan and Manitoba, both 6-3, play in the final championship round-robin draw on Friday morning.
According to coach Rob Bucholz, the 18-year-old Scoffin, who represented Yukon each of the last six years, was exceptionally sharp in both games Thursday. He shot 92 per cent and 88 per cent, respectively and finished as the top-shooting skip in the round robin.
After clinching a playoff berth with the win over Nova Scotia, Scoffin told reporters: “There was a lot riding on that game, and it definitely got the juices flowing. It was a tight battle back and forth. We got a fortunate steal of two and that kind of cracked it open a little bit. But they never went away.”
In the women’s seeding pool, Alberta’s Karynn Flory lost 7-6 in an extra end to P.E.I.’s Veronica Smith. Flory, 4-4 plus a loss in the tiebreaker after the preliminary round robin, plays her final game Friday morning.
