Canadian curling team member Ryan Fry.

VICTORIA _ A chat over some beers resulted in Brad Jacobs adding the final piece to his curling team.

The 2012 Tim Hortons Brier in Saskatoon was a disaster for Jacobs' Northern Ontario crew and Brad Gushue's team from Newfoundland and Labrador. Both rinks struggled to 5-6 records and missed the playoffs.

Near the end of the week Ryan Fry, then a third on Gushue's rink, was licking his wounds with Jacobs' rink over a few refreshments.

"It was a horrible year for both of us," Fry said during this week's Ford World Men's Curling Championship. "We were just talking that, if it ever happened, I wouldn't mind curling with you guys.

"It just so happened me and Brad Gushue decided to part ways. I gave Brad (Jacobs) a call. It didn't take very long. The only thing that took a little bit of time was getting out of my job and selling my house in Newfoundland."

In their first full season together Fry has played an important role in Jacobs' rink winning the Brier and going unbeaten in their first

R.A. Dickey and J.P. Arencibia couldn't get on the same page in the Blue Jays' opener. (Getty Images)Toronto excitedly packed the Rogers Centre on Tuesday night, but the Blue Jays gave them little to cheer about.

The most anticipated Blue Jays season in years began with a thud, a 4-1 loss to the Cleveland Indians in front of a sellout crowd of 48,857. Raucous ovations during pre-game ceremonies turned to frustration and boos by the second inning when the Indians took a 2-0 lead.

Much of the fan frustration early on was directed at Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia. Arencibia struggled to corral R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball, allowing two passed balls in the inning which led to runners advancing and eventually scoring. Dickey isn’t concerned about Arencibia, or the Blue Jays 2013 fortunes.

“We’re family in there, you try to stay positive, but it’s a tough thing to do [catch a knuckleball],” Dickey said. “I’m sure he’ll identify whatever inhibited him and fix it. Sometime you throw a good knuckleball, and no one is catching it. That’s just the way it is. We’ll fix it.”

It's the moment tens of thousands have been waiting for. After an off-season of intrigue and seemingly constant upheaval, the Toronto Blue Jays enter the 2013 season as,if not favourites, then definite contenders for their first championship in 20 years.

R.A. Dickey takes to the mound as a symbol of a new Blue Jays identity. The 2012 National League Cy Young Award winner hopes to work his magic on an unfamiliar American League batting crew, while Jose Reyes leads an overhauled Jays fielding unit.

Join Yahoo! Sports live from the Rogers Centre in Toronto at 6 p.m. Eastern for all the pomp and circumstance from the Blue Jays home opener against the Cleveland Indians. We'll bring you the sights and sounds, and you can share your thoughts about the Blue Jays for tonight and beyond before the game gets underway at 7:07 p.m.

The 2013 baseball season's almost here. Join us!

Jose Calderon (right) had an impressive outing in his return to Toronto Monday night. (Getty)It will likely go down as one of the more memorable nights in Jose Calderon’s NBA career.

The Detroit Pistons point guard received a rousing ovation from the Toronto crowd upon his return to the Air Canada Centre Monday night, got to recall his seven-plus years as a Raptor in an emotional video tribute and then gave fans a vintage performance on the court, scoring 19 points and adding nine assists in a 108-98 Pistons victory.

“I think it’s going to be one of the better moments in my career, for sure,” the 31-year-old Calderon told the media after the game, referencing the video tribute. “It was a lot of great moments there that came to my mind. I was thinking about it. It was a tough one because it was during a timeout, so I didn’t know if I should check the board while coach was talking or just saying thank you. It was great.”

Calderon of course was traded back in January but at one point Monday it seemed as though he had forgotten that he no longer played for the Raptors. At the end

Is a dunk contest really about who gets the highest scores or who throws one down that has both the high degree of difficulty and holy flurking schnit factor? Canada's Andrew Wiggins, AKA Maple Jordan, did not win the dunk contest on Monday night in Chicago ahead of Wednesday's McDonald's All American Game.

But the small forward from Concord, Ont., did score a perfect 60/60 by completing a reverse 180 with a through-the-legs move on his second attempt. It brought the house down and offered the latest indication that the 18-year-old wunderkind might have the highest ceiling of any high school prospect in years. Those in the know were name-dropping Kevin Durant and LeBron James.

Scottish team third Tom Brewster.

VICTORIA _ Scotland is doing something very different at this year's Ford World Men's Curling Championship. The jury is still deliberating on whether it's genius or folly.

The first thing the Scots have done is have insert David Murdoch, the two-time world champion, as the team's skip. Tom Brewster, who skipped the team to back-to-back world championship silver medals, is playing third. Scotland is also using a five-man rotation which means every player, with the exception of Murdoch, swap positions or sits out a game.

"I want everyone to be ready to play," said coach Soeren Gran. "We are going to do the first eight games on the rotation schedule. Then we will have to see who is going to play for the last three games in the round robin."

Gran admits that for many curling traditionalists his approach is as alien as having all NHL games played four-on-four, or adding a fourth down to the CFL.

"I don't think I have too many people who are behind me about this," said Gran, who represented

Dallas Eakins is leading the Toronto Marlies to another successful season. (Getty Images)It’s one of the unique challenges many American Hockey League coaches are forced to face and it’s something Toronto Marlies head coach Dallas Eakins has tackled head-on this season.

Over the course of the 2012-2013 campaign Eakins has had eight of his top players called up to the Toronto Maple Leafs and some, like Nazem Kadri, Matt Frattin, Mike Kostka, Mark Fraser and Ben Scrivens have stuck with the NHL club permanently.

But no matter how many of Eakins players are called up to the Leafs he still has to build a successful team at the AHL level. He  refuses to use losing players to the NHL as any kind of excuse.

“It’s part of what we preach here,” Eakins said after the Marlies' 4-3 overtime victory over the Abbotsford Heat on Saturday. “We don’t care who has gone up and we don’t care who’s coming in. We have a certain standard in the way we’re going to play.

“If we took our 20 guys here today and had them stick their hands in a bucket of water, the water would rise up. And so Ryan

Stauskas and Michigan will face Syracuse in Final Four in Atlanta on Saturday (The Associated Press)

What is it about Nik Stauskas being pathologically unable to miss on holidays? The Mississauga baller became Internet famous for a backyard shooting video he made on Christmas Eve. On Easter Sunday, the basketball whiz from a hockey country had the biggest shooting night of his young life in a football stadium.

Cowboys Stadium was built extra large to accommodate plutocrat Jerry Jones' ego and, on alternate weekends in the fall, Dallas Cowboys football games. The shooting performance that Mississauga's Nik Stauskas, in the wake of three quiet games to his first NCAA Tournament, had during the Michigan Wolverines' Elite Eight win over Florida on Sunday is all the more remarkable because of the setting. The freshman guard scored 22 points, making all six of his three-point shots, to help fourth-seeded Michigan outclass the third-seeded Gators.

[Michigan rolls into Final Four, beats Fla. 79-59]

In a venue with no shooting background to help perimeter threats with their depth perception — imagine major-league hitters without the blacked-out hitter's backdrop in centre field — Stauskas couldn't miss. Honing his form by taking 1,000 shots on a day on his backyard court in Mississauga paid off.