Elite 10 turns curling on its head as Gushue draws the button to win

A funny thing happened on the way to Brad Gushue's win over Reid Carruthers at the Elite 10 championship in Victoria, B.C., on Sunday.

All of a sudden, having hammer meant something.

With the game all square after eight ends (each team had taken three ends while the other two were pushes), Gushue drew the button to out-count Carruthers' shot to the back eight foot, giving the team from Newfoundland & Labrador its eighth win in fourteen events this season.

This after Gushue and Carruthers had combined to win five ends while holding hammer, something that was not easy to do during the rest of the event.

The Elite 10 once again flipped the game on its head, beyond inviting Rachel Homan's team to take part in a field rounded out by nine men's teams. While Homan's round-robin win over Charley Thomas' foursome was notable, there were a few other differences, echoing the event's inaugural appearance in 2015.

You like rocks in play? You got 'em. Steals? Plenty.

The match play scoring format and five-rock rule - which were employed at this event last year - once again led to a curling competition where pilfering ends became the more likely way to victory than did scoring multiple points while having hammer.

Heading into Sunday's championship game, teams had combined for 57 stolen ends while 53 were won by teams that had hammer (scoring at least two points to take the end). When all was said and done for the week, it ended up a tie: steals 58, hammer 58.

Even though last rock made a big comeback in the Gushue vs. Carruthers game, stealing was a major part of the competition's overall personality.

Compare the Elite 10's statistics to this year's Brier, where a total of 98 ends were stolen and 226 multi-point ends were scored by teams who had the hammer -- far below the 50-50 split seen at Elite 10. At this year's Scotties, the numbers were also hammer-heavy, with 154 stolen as opposed to 210 multi-point ends scored by teams with the brick.

At the Elite 10, last-rock advantage became first-rock advantage until the tables started to balance a bit during the playoffs.

“I think people are getting a little bit more comfortable with the style of play and the skips that are curling well here are curling really well," said Sportsnet commentator Kevin Martin, partway through the final.

“It’s more difficult to steal when the skips are making all the shots.”

That is true in most games, regardless of the style of play.

For those in favour of seeking new horizons, the Elite 10 is proving a worthy testing ground with experimentation increased in year two of its existence.

The no-tick rule employed at this year's competition is born of the rapid rise in the number of teams who are now adept at that shot. Prohibiting the moving of any guard that is touching the centre line, until after the fifth stone of an end has been played, is a novel concept, and probably a needed change in the game of curling. It wasn't that long ago that Team Homan and their lead Lisa Weagle were introducing us to the shot as a bona fide weapon in the arsenal, one which they had perfected, really, before anyone else.

Now, most every lead in the game plays that shot - or had better be able to if they'd like to keep their job - and it has begun to render the free guard zone (as it is currently universally employed) a creeping anachronism. Back in the day, when the peel shot became so common and easily executed, the game changed to keep up, with first the three and then four-rock rule being instituted to ensure guards would be kept in place and that offence could return from the brink of extinction.

The tick shot is becoming as sure a thing as the peel, however, and we are approaching the time when guards will need more protection in conventional curling. Without extra protection, they'll be pushed aside as easily and often as they were just before the free guard zone was introduced. Not long ago, tick shots were greeted with amazement because they were so novel. Now, more and more, they are being greeted with sighs and sarcasm: "Great. Another tick shot."

It's true that, in match play, fewer tick shots might be played as each team is content to have rocks in play and race to the four-foot. It will probably be of more value in conventional curling, overall, and trotting it out in Victoria can at least forward the conversation on that.

This year's Elite 10 also attempted to grapple with the ongoing saga of broom heads. Teams were allowed two brooms for sweepers and one for a skip, with no changing of broom heads for the entire competition. Organizers even took the step, apparently, of locking up all the brooms after each game in order to ensure there'd be no shenanigans.

I've written thousands and thousands of words on this season's broom controversies and have about as much enthusiasm for writing more, right now, as I do for doing my taxes. (The first story, from last October, can be found here.)

Suffice to say, questions about materials and sweeping technique can all be put to rest this off-season with the inevitability of new - and, um, sweeping - regulations being added this off-season.

One Elite 10 experiment that left me cold was the one that saw players forbidden from using stopwatches to time rocks. That seems an unnecessary move to make on a full-time basis as there haven't been a lot of complaints - I can't remember hearing even one - about that piece of equipment. No harm in trying that out, however, and it did seem that the lack of timing devices led to some occasional struggles for many of the teams at the event. Let the players have their watches, though. It leads to better curling.

The Grand Slam - in particular the Elite 10 - is showing itself to be an essential testing ground for new ideas in the game. Not everything will work, but at least those ideas find the light of day, seeing how they look beyond the scope of just theory.

That's good at a time when the game of curling seems to be at an extremely important crossroads in its evolution.