Curling Canada shakes up Brier, Scotties formats again

Relegation is being relegated. Residency rules are changing.

In a couple of rather large announcements coming at the conclusion of their annual summit (held this year in Collingwood, Ontario), Curling Canada says it is making changes to the way The Scotties and Brier will be contested in the future, beginning in 2018.

It means the widely panned relegation system (what Curling Canada refers to as "pre-qualifying"), introduced this past season, will be punted in favour of a field that includes teams from all 14 member associations (all the provinces and territories, including two teams from Ontario).

As well, each of the competing teams will be allowed to have one player from outside their province or territory on the roster, which might be Curling Canada's way with dealing with a problem that had been plaguing the sport for some years, now, by merely allowing it to happen under new rules.

First, the removal of pre-qualifying:

This will mean no mini-tournament before The Scotties and Brier, beginning in 2018 (the relegation rules will remain in place for the 2016 and 2017 national championships, however). At least 14 teams will take part in national championships (15 if the defending champions from the previous year are still given an automatic berth, which is very likely to happen).

Ever since Curling Canada (The Canadian Curling Association, as it was known prior to this year) introduced the idea of adding Northern Ontario to The Scotties and a Team Canada to The Brier back in 2012, they took unfriendly fire from some players and fans alike. When the idea became reality this past season, the criticism seemed to increase. When Nova Scotia failed to qualify for the Brier for the first time in the event's history and the players seemed unhappy with the way the pre-qualifying tournament was handled at both the Brier and Scotties, there was a rather vociferous call to make a change. Some, like Nova Scotia's Mark Dacey, laid the blame for his province's failures at the feet of the provincial body. The Nova Scotia Curling Association, however, made it well known that it would head to this summer's summit pushing hard for expanded fields and it obviously had backing from others.

“As always, we listened to the input of our Member Associations and stakeholders and I think this is a format worth trying out,” said Hugh Avery, Chair of the Curling Canada Board of Governors.

There is no guarantee that the expanded fields at Scotties and Briers will remain after 2018. Curling Canada has termed this a "pilot project" in its media release, so there is obviously wiggle room to adjust again should there be problems.

This is a big, big change on the national championship stage with Curling Canada either being accused of caving in to the pressure or applauded for reacting positively to the wants and needs of the sport's fans and players.

With fields that are larger than the current 12 teams, both The Brier and Scotties will almost certainly have to become five sheet tourneys as opposed to the current four sheets that we've seen. One of the reasons that had been cited, in the past, against bigger fields was precisely that. That you couldn't comfortably fill the ice surface with five sheets and accommodate the needs of television production as well. However, the Grand Slam of Curling's ability to televise events with five sheets at its venues has put the lie to that assertion.

As for residency rules, teams chasing a provincial title may now include one player from outside their province. Curling Canada seems to be throwing its arms up and surrendering to a practice that has gotten more and more out of hand over the past few years. One that has seen curlers join teams outside their jurisdiction and do it by meeting the low bar of laughable standards, approved by the provinces themselves. One basically needed only to provide "proof" of residency by showing they'd met three of the following four standards: A mailing address (or lease agreement), driver's licence, health card or letter from an employer stating that the curler was an employee. There have been a number of high profile curlers, recently, who've lived outside of the province for which they've curled, with pretty well everybody knowing about it. In that sense, Curling Canada has done the equivalent of raising its highway speed limits to 120 km/h. You know, since everyone's doing it anyway....

By instituting this new relaxed residency rule, Curling Canada hopes to keep the practice of out of province curlers to a minimum, vowing to hold the remaining three members of a team to much stricter residency standards and it maintains it has secured the players' cooperation in that regard.

“We understand the thought process that went into this decision, and we know it wasn’t an easy decision, but we believe it was the right one and we will do what we can to help Curling Canada and the Member Associations make it work,” said curler Mike McEwen, in the Curling Canada media release.

Another change adopted by Curling Canada will see junior players being able to enter the provincial fray for the right to go to a Scotties or Brier.

However, the big changes here are all about the burial of the relegation process and officially welcoming something that was happening anyway.

Purists will be happiest with the former, maybe not so hot on the latter.