Brad Gushue climbs the curling charts; his team earns a reputation as comeback kings

It's not like Brad Gushue won The Canadian Open and then decided to immediately hop on a plane to Jamaica as a form of celebration. Be a good way to go about it, though.

“The timing ended up being pretty good," said Gushue over Skype, as a rainstorm was putting a damper on a family trip that had been planned a year ago. "To win a big event like that and then turn around and go on a trip to Jamaica? It worked out perfect."

The rain didn't seem to be bother Gushue any as we talked over his team's successful first half of the season, his reunion with vice Mark Nichols and Gushue's ongoing efforts to land a Brier for the city of St. John's.

Generally speaking, one rainy day would not really bother any Canadian who finds themself in Jamaica in December. For Gushue, the afterglow of his outstanding shot to win the Canadian Open might well have made those raindrops even less of a nuisance.

“It’s right up there near the top," said Gushue, when asked to rank his cozy draw to the button for two, a shot that iced the second Grand Slam of Curling win of the year for he and his teammates. "Mark and me were going through it on the drive back from Yorkton to Regina. The only one we can compare it to is I made a draw to the pin to beat Jay Peachey in the trials back in 2005. That’s the only one I can compare it to.”

Nine years and an array of teammates have come and gone for Gushue in that time. He's fiddled with the combination ever since his Olympic gold medal win at Torino, in 2006. Competitive year in and year out, he's never quite found the recipe to get his name on the one major trophy that has eluded him so far - The Brier Tankard.

This season's hard scrabble successes have to make you wonder if 2015 is the year Gushue finally gets his hands on that mug. Ranked second on the money list and third in the World Curling Tour's Order of Merit standings, Gushue, Nichols, second Brett Gallant and lead Geoff Walker have done it the hard way, it seems.  So often, this season, the team has gotten behind the eight ball only to escape in the late going, the way they did against Steve Laycock in the Canadian Open final. They got to that final by posting comeback playoff wins against Brad Jacobs and Kevin Koe.

“To be quite honest, we haven’t played nearly as good as we’re capable of playing, said Gushue. "You know, Mark struggled this week (at the Open) and I’ve had a couple of weeks where I haven’t played my best.”

Scrambling back against deficits on a regular basis is either a good thing or a bad one, depending on how you want to look at it. It's definitely better to win than lose but you also might wonder how long you can live that kind of charmed existence. Gushue knows one thing; his team is durable.

“The biggest thing with this group of four players that I find is that there is no quit. Not even from one individual. It doesn’t matter if we’re down one point or four points. there’s that competitiveness, that grinding.”

“What I’d like to get to," Gushue says with a laugh, "is where we don’t have to use that. Where we actually have a two or three point lead instead of having to grind and fight for ways to win.”

Just after last weekend's win in Yorkton, Gushue had said that his team "doesn't quit anymore." He followed up on that point, from Jamaica. "The thing is, we’re finding ways to win."

“Something’s clicked that we have that characteristic.”

Rebounding on a regular basis has helped build a never-say-die attitude.

“We just never feel out of a game even though we’re not playing well. We’ve turned a lot of games around this year and stole some wins, more so than probably what we’ve done in the last five years combined,” said Gushue, lamenting some tough losses in past slams on big shots by skips like Kevin Koe and Glenn Howard. "Over the last couple of years it was almost like we were finding ways to lose.”

Parting ways with second Adam Casey at the end of the 2013-14 season, Team Gushue's reconfigured line up for this season includes last year's vice, Brett Gallant, moving to second, as well as the return of Nichols, a Gushue teammate (and fellow gold medal Olympian) from 1998 to 2011. Nichols' presence seems to have steadied things and given the skip some relief from a burdensome existence.

“The biggest thing is just his experience," Gushue said, before explaining what the addition of his old friend has meant.

"The last couple of years, playing with some younger guys, guys that didn’t have the experience that I did, sometimes you felt like you were the only one out there and I felt like a mentor or a teacher. Now, with Mark there, he’s taken a lot of that load off."

Walker and Gallant - who are 29 and 24 years old, respectively, get marks from Gushue for their emergence as seasoned vets and that has been a big consideration as well.

“With another year of experience - the guys have been on tour for three or four years - you’re not teaching them as much or mentoring them as much as what I was in the past couple of years. That combination has helped a little bit.”

Gushue, who is taking a mid-season break for the second year in a row - “It allows me to recharge the batteries for the second half of the season," he said - will get back to the ice after Christmas, ramping up preparation for his team's next major event, the Perth Masters, in Scotland, in early January. There Team Gushue will take on the likes of Tom Brewster, Sven Michel, Greg Balsdon and Mike McEwen, whom Gushue beat to win The Masters, in November.

But for now, Brad Gushue can bask in the warmth of the Jamaican climate and in the memory of the shot that won the Canadian Open. A shot that capped another comeback and, he says, illustrated the team's growing curling harmony.

“We had a really good discussion amongst us on what the speed was going to be, how much it was going to curl. And we just trusted it. It was the epitome of a team shot. We all contributed to it and put her right in the spot that we wanted."

"The guys just judged it perfectly.”

GUSHUE FEELING POSITIVE ABOUT A BRIER IN ST. JOHN'S

Tough to find a curling fan who doesn't think a Brier in St. John's is a great idea.

“Everywhere I go someone talks to me like ‘if it’s in St. John’s we’re there. We’re booking the first day.’ Even in Yorkton I must have had two dozen people come and say that to me,” recounted an enthusiastic Gushue.

For a number of years now, Gushue has been part of a group working behind the scenes to muster the necessary support and infrastructure to land the Brier, which hasn't been held in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1972.

Gushue is feeling optimistic about the prospect of his home province hosting a Brier - which would be played at the Mile One Centre - in the near future. He believes most of the parties that would be involved, including the Canadian Curling Association, are willing.

“I think the CCA is happy with the facility, with the patch, with everything that we proposed. We have the hotels and the airport’s been upgraded. Everything’s in place other than we need some contribution from our government. Hopefully that’s gonna come because the spinoffs from The Brier are incredible (the CCA agrees with that) and I think it’d be great for the city of St. John’s."

“I think we have everything in place other than some government funding to make up the difference from some of the larger venues (that have hosted recent Briers),” he said.

Gushue says he's had informal discussions with government officials who have indicated they're already willing as fans and will back the idea, politically, as long as it makes economic sense to do so.

“There’s a lot of interest," Gushue said. "I think it’d be really successful. Hopefully, we can get everyone on board and make it happen.”