West St. Paul’s Mike McEwen suffered the most disappointing performance of perhaps all of the teams at the Tim Hortons Brier in the Calgary bubble.
One of the top-rated teams in the world, McEwen suffered a couple of upsets early in the going and was out of the running for the championship round two games before his week was over.
“It was built up as this big thing for us that we looked forward to,” lead Colin Hodgson told media during a Curling Canada Zoom conference. “And, I guess, in some ways, it was an anxiety and then, we got here and that balloon burst and it was a deflating feeling.”
McEwen had lost a tie-breaker at the 2020 Brier.
“We can beat anybody on any given day and do it quite consistently,” said McEwen, who was also supported by third Reid Carruthers and second Derek Samagalski. “But our cohesiveness just wasn’t there (this week).”
Jason Gunnlaugson of Morris, who defeated McEwen in an all-Manitoba showdown early, did make it to at least a tie-breaker heading into the last draw of the roundrobin.
“I’m ready to go home, to be quite honest,” McEwen said.
Although his team is planning to return to Calgary to compete in back-to-back Grand Slam events in April, McEwen will reportedly remain in Winnipeg because his wife, Dawn, is due to give birth to their second child in April.
