Dave Nedohin at the 2013 Players' Championship. (Anil Mungal/Sportsnet)

Good thing Kevin Martin, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert waited a bit before making that second call.

They haven't said it outwardly, but my guess is that when Dave Nedohin first turned down their offer to join their team and make a go at an Olympic berth at the Sochi games, the trio thought best to wait to see if a few days of contemplation on Nedohin's part might just have him calling back.

It did.

Now, with a summer of off-season prep and a furious autumn of honing the rough edges ahead, Team Kevin Martin has moved from the category of splintering wreckage to bona fide Olympic team challenger. If the transition from outgoing third John Morris to Nedohin is as smooth as expected, you could even paint a rosy picture of a foursome as good as any that will be at the Olympic Trials in Winnipeg next November.

This is a perfect fit for Martin's team in so many ways. No wonder that they reached out to Nedohin almost immediately after Morris announced he was leaving the team two weeks ago.

John Morris will cast stones for Jim Cotter's rink now. (CP)

A few days after his split with Team Kevin Martin, John Morris has a new curling home with Jim Cotter's British Columbia based rink.

The Canadian Curling Association's media release, outlining the teams that are rounding out the field at next autumn's Olympic pre-trials event (The Road To The Roar), contained this little nugget of information:

In addition to being officially named as a competing team in the Road to the Roar, Cotter's team also announced on Wednesday that it has added 2010 Olympic gold-medallist John Morris to its lineup for the 2013-14 season.

Immediately there was wonder. If John Morris is in, who is out with Team Cotter?

A quick check of Team Cotter's Facebook page shows that no one is out. However, by the time the pre-trials come about in Kitchener next November, someone will be rooted as an alternate.

“We’re all gonna feed off each other. A friendly competition, if you will. We’ll make it work," said Cotter over the phone from his home in Kelowna.

Over the

Marc Kennedy (L) with John Morris and Kevin Martin at the Vancouver Olympics. (CP)

Even though the seeds of the Kevin Martin/John Morris split were in the wind for the last couple of years, team second Marc Kennedy was still hopeful a resolution could be reached and that the squad would remain intact for next season. In a candid interview this morning, Kennedy painted a portrait of a rink in various degrees of disintegration over the last two years or so, but one that was still hopeful of working through the obstacles that had been presented by a dissolving relationship between the skip and the third.

“The season had just finished so we were kind of looking for some time to think about things and debrief and then he kind of shocked us a bit yesterday," Kennedy said of Morris' announcement that he was leaving the team he'd played vice on for the last seven seasons, winning Olympic gold, two Briers and a world championship.

“We were still kind of waiting for them to work things out and get it going," Kennedy said of Martin and Morris.

Instead, according to Kennedy,

Kevin Martin (L) and John Morris at the 2013 Brier in Edmonton. (CP)

Just a few days after The Players' Championship capped the 2012-13 curling season, the sport has been rocked with some big, unexpected news.

John Morris is leaving Team Kevin Martin, a story broken by Sportsnet's Mike Johnston, and then confirmed by Morris in a Canadian Curling Association media release.

Morris, who is said to be unavailable to the media until this coming Friday, made this statement in the CCA's release:

“Unfortunately we have had a challenging past few seasons and have not lived up to our expectations of being the best curling team in the world. As much as we’ve all tried very hard to find a way to fight back and get better, in the end it was obvious that we needed a change. Myself and Kevin were no longer thriving in our back-end role like we did in our 2010 Olympic gold-medal run. I have always been a very driven and intense athlete and right now, in this situation, I feel my passion and love for the game of curling is not where it needs to be. As a result, it is

Players step past the Grand Slam Of Curling logo on the ice at The Players' Championship, in Toronto. (Anil Mungal/Sportsnet)

As the fourth leg in this season's Grand Slam Of Curling - The Players' Championship - winds down in Toronto this weekend, some eyes are already turning to the future and possible forays beyond Canada's borders.

"The vision is definitely to go to Europe, in the near future" said Pierre Charette, the president of the World Curling Players' Association.

“They’ve already been talking about that this year," offered current men's world champion Niklas Edin. "They’ve talked about getting a slam to Switzerland or one to China. That will happen sooner or later. We’ll see how the slams go next year. I think they’re happy with the progression so far this season. We still need to build on that and get other countries involved. In a few years I’m really sure we’re going to see slam events in other countries too.”

“Switzerland is probably a natural," echoed Charette. "They have good events there and we think we could do well there.” After that, he says, "obviously the U.S. and then the Pacific

Dave Nedohin shoots in his snazzy Norwegian pants at The Players' Championship. (Anil Mungal/Sportsnet)

It's last curling call for Dave Nedohin, at least for awhile.

As the four-time Brier champion gets ready to slip out of the curling stream in order to support his wife Heather's dreams of Olympic glory, he's having a ball at this week's Players' Championship, pulling on a pair of famed Norwegian pants as vice for skip Thomas Ulsrud.

“I told them that as long as the pants actually fit, I have no problem with them," he said with a laugh, as we sat rink side after his team's win 8-2 win over Saskatoon's Steve Laycock.

"If I didn’t want to wear those pants, I’d probably look like the prude Canadian out there. To me, it was a no-brainer. I wanted to feel part of the team."

Nedohin thought his season was over. His team had failed to qualify for the Alberta playdowns and he was home contemplating next year's curling inactivity when Ulsrud called him out of the blue about a month ago. The team's usual vice, Torger Nergard, decided to stay back home, as his wife was about to have a baby.

Mattamy Athletic Centre being prepped for curling. (Curling Zone/WCT)

Walking into the former Maple Leaf Gardens (now the Mattamy Athletic Centre) for the first time in more than 15 years, I didn't get a real sense of the ghosts of glories past right away.

Traipsing through the renovated lobby and up the escalators, past the gym and fitness centre, I could have been anywhere. It was once I arrived on the fourth floor and passed through the doors to the arena that I was really taken back in time.

There, above, was that great vaulted ceiling. That cathedral-like loft. A little brighter than it once was, a little whiter. But, still, there was no mistaking all that wonderful metalwork, all girders and rivets and trusses.

Tuesday night, at the opening of The Players' Championship, time and again my gaze left the shotmaking exploits of the world's best players below, to again drink in the memories that came back each and every time I spied that wonderful old ceiling.

The Sistine Chapel it ain't, but for anyone growing up in Ontario, that roof can conjure the

The inimitable Shorty Jenkins poses with his trademark pink all around him. (CP)

The world of curling is poorer, today, with the loss of one of the sport's great and beloved characters.

Ice maker Clarence (Shorty) Jenkins, the man in pink, passed away, today, at the age of 77.

In a sport filled with colourful, larger than life players, Jenkins became just as big a name, noted as the only ice maker to choose for any big event, as well as for his affinity for the colour pink, which he wore plenty of as the years went by.

Jenkins' legend became so large, in fact, that Tim Hortons once decided to feature him in a commercial. (You can see it by clicking here)

As well, a tournament in Brockville, Ontario - The Shorty Jenkins Classic - annually draws some of the biggest names in the sport.

As news of Jenkins' passing spread throughout the curling world, notes of condolences and fond memories appeared on Twitter:

Born in Hanna, Alberta, in 1935, Jenkins served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and then took a job in the oil industry before deciding that ice making