Brier 2015: Team Canada puts growing pains behind as it prepares to defend the title with John Morris at the helm

“It took us awhile to kinda get things figured out, but I think we have," says Nolan Thiessen, a few days ahead of the 2015 Brier, which kicks off this week in Calgary.

The 34 year old lead for Team Canada - the first ever Team Canada to play at a Brier - is hopeful that early season struggles are all behind a rink that comes into the event as defending champions. There have been tribulations. The kind that go along with putting the pieces of a team in order.

“We didn’t have a great start to the season," he admits. "We didn’t play great.”

Good reason for that. Although they were invited back to this year's Brier by virtue of their win at last year's, it's not the same team. The great shock wave that enveloped men's curling in 2014 really emanated from this squad, with skip Kevin Koe - who'd led the team since 2006 - deciding to hitch his wagon, for the next Olympic cycle, to some new teammates.

Thiessen and second Carter Rycroft had been mates of Koe's the entire time, while vice Pat Simmons jumped aboard in 2011.

With the chance to wear the maple leaf at this year's Brier, Thiessen, Rycroft and Simmons welcomed John Morris to the team as their new skip. If that seems like a small change because it's just one player, well, it ain't.

“You get to be so you don’t even think about it,” says Thiessen of all the moving physical, emotional and psychological parts that go into making really great curling teams hum. Add a new lead, that affects things a little. Add a new skip, though, that affects things a lot. An awful lot. The team had been well-versed in Koe's tendencies, strategies and personality. Now, with Morris, that comfort was diminished and consistency was a puzzle.

So it was that Team Canada struggled for a good half of this season, slow out of the gates and searching for cohesion. That the team had decided to play a diminished schedule and head right for The Slams meant they were trying to find their way in some of the toughest events in the world.

At The Masters, in October, they failed to make the playoffs. A few weeks later, at The National, they were punted in the quarter-finals. In December, they failed to make the playoff grade at either the Canada Cup or The Canadian Open. 

They'd practiced and they'd talked. They'd discussed how things would go on the ice, how they would handle certain situations, how they'd react to the new skip and how he'd react to them in the heat of battle. Talk is cheap, though, and experiencing things is a different matter than planning for them.

“Those are the trial and error things that you have to go through," offers Thiessen. "You’ve got to get in those situations and get those reps. Until you’re in those moments, until you go through the fires together, it’s tough to really know."

“John talks a lot more on the ice than Kevin ever would," Thiessen says of the on-ice adjustment. "Their personalities are different that way. John, he’s going a mile a minute and Kevin’s a lot more... methodical, I call it.”

“He just doesn’t have outward emotion," he says, of Koe. "It’s not that he’s not caring. It’s not that his brain’s not going a mile a minute, either. It’s just that he’s not expressing that to anybody whereas John will express a lot more of his feelings. That’s the biggest change that we’ve seen."

In one area, Morris and Koe seem similar to Thiessen. "They both try to play to the strengths of their team which is a good way to skip,” he says.

Off the ice, Thiessen reports, the team was fine from the get go. They'd known Morris from the tour, of course, and felt he'd mesh just fine with them. They took steps to try and galvanize the new relationship away from the arena.

“We’ve rented a few houses to stay in, some bed and breakfasts, as opposed to staying in the (event) hotel, so we’re all together the whole time. And we’re laughing and joking around. I mean, we’ve got the same sense of humour and we enjoy each other’s company a ton. On the ice, we were pretty frustrated at the start of the year with how things were going. It’s not as though we didn’t enjoy each other’s company and we didn’t have a lot of fun.”

After a half season of frustration, Thiessen believes he and his Glencoe Club teammates have things smoothed out just in time for nationals. The struggles of pre-Christmas gave way to good performances for the team in the new year. Better at The Continental Cup. Better at The Skins Game, where they made the final, falling to Brad Jacobs with a $37,000.00 seventh end being the difference between winning and losing.

Now comes the chance to hit the ice in Calgary, both as Team Canada and as a second Alberta team. That's because Koe, along with Ben Hebert, Brent Laing and Marc Kennedy (also a Glencoe Club team) will be there as well, having won the Alberta provincial championship earlier this month. That has many fans looking at next Tuesday night's match between the two as a must-watch.

There won't be any tension, Thiessen says, outside of the usual competitive kind.

Will it be strange? Not too, insists Thiessen. The weirdness of not playing with Koe may have been exorcised at the Canada Cup, when the two sides met for the first time. Thiessen recalls being confused about whether his pre-game practice session came first or second as well as what colour rocks he was playing before realizing that "no, we're not with Koe anymore."

He relates a humorous story from within the game that followed that practice session.

“There was a shot where a bunch of stuff happened in the house and the rocks were flying. And Pat and Brent were both sweeping in the house and Kevin yells “hard, Pat!” Then he looks up and me and Carter and we were like "yeah, it’s good to know that everybody’s confused, still."

When it comes to the Brier and that Tuesday meeting with his old skip, Thiessen feels no confusion.

“I’m going to be friends with Kevin the rest of my life," he declares. "I’m not too concerned about a one-off game at The Brier. That being said, I wanna beat him. Because they’re standing in the way of us winning The Brier. And that’s all that matters on Tuesday night.”

There has been a general feeling out there in the curling universe that this season would be a 'one and done' proposition for the Brier's first Team Canada. Before Morris joined, he'd proclaimed he was taking time away from the game but changed his mind when given the opportunity. Rycroft has not been shy about his desire to step back from curling in some way. Thiessen feels the same way, noting that his wife, Christine, has made sacrifices and worked more so he could continue to play.

However, nothing has been ruled out at this point.

“There’s definitely possibilities beyond this (season)," says Thiessen. “We just want to go play in the Brier and see what happens. After the Brier, we’ll start talking about next year and other things that are going on in life."

If they wind up lifting the tankard again? Will that focus the decision-making process?

“If you win the Brier you can come back again the next year, so, might as well keep curling," he concedes.

That's a big "if," however. The 2015 Brier field is stacked.

“It’s not like we don’t have the chops to win this thing,” Thiessen insists. He's right, of course. Three of them did that just last year. The skip? He's done it twice while with Kevin Martin.

The talent is there. Much of Team Canada's success will come down to the very first line in this column, delivered - appropriately enough - by the team's lead.