Tim Hortons Brier: Quebec make noise, but Cinderella run falls short in Kamloops

KAMLOOPS, B.C. — With their final stone in the ninth end, Team Quebec could either make a difficult draw for the single point, or make an even more difficult bank shot to score twice and take a one-point lead into the 10th end.

High-level sport, by nature, is a risk-averse endeavour, even though the math generally suggests that playing aggressively will maximize a team's chances of winning. In hockey, the math says that carrying the puck into the zone is the higher percentage play, yet teams elect to dump and chase. In football, the math says that teams don't gamble enough on third down. In baseball, teams utilize the sacrifice bunt far too often, so says the math.

Surely the following numbers weren't going through the head of Jean-Michel Menard, but had he made the shot and scored twice to take a one-point lead, he'd have an 83 per cent chance of victory. A miss, allowing his opponent Team Alberta to score a single point, would mean he'd have a 17 per cent chance. It's easier to weigh the risk and reward of the aggressive play when even if he'd made the draw and taken his single point, he'd have been tied without the hammer in the tenth end: teams in that situation at recent Tim Hortons Brier tournaments win just 28 per cent of the time.

"We played a couple of shots along that line during the game," Menard said after the game, talking about his attempted angle takeout. "I honestly thought I could make it."

Team Quebec might not survive in a tournament like this if they made the safe play, and it may help them that they aren't playing under the same pressure as rinks skipped by Kevin Koe, Jeff Stoughton or John Morris. Nobody was uprooted from their home province to play for Team Quebec. Menard admitted that his rink doesn't play as much as the near-professional teams favourited at the Brier. They aren't forces on the grand slam circuit and they play event to event. Their focus is winning the provincial championship, not accruing points during the four-year Olympic cycle, which begins anew here in 2014.

Menard had a lot of success against the top rinks in Kamloops this past week. He'd defeated Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia in the round robin. Those were the three other playoff teams. His team played loose and aggressive, capitalizing on opponent mistakes and riding some magic all the way into the Saturday Semi-Final.

"I think they get up more for the bigger teams than they do for some of the lesser teams and that's good for them," said Stoughton, after the Mantioban skip lost his page playoff game to the Quebec rink. "Whatever it is, it's working."

When you look at the perennial powerhouse provinces at Canada's annual curling championship, you must include Quebec, even if Canada's French-speaking province doesn't exactly have the rich history of Western, Central, and Atlantic provinces when it comes to curling. The traditional pipe band that lead the teams into the arena before every draw aren't playing Gens du Pays. Menard is the only Francophone skip to win a Brier in the tournament's long history, accomplished back in 2006 with a near-entirely different rink. Only second Eric Sylvain was on that team, and since then he's added vice skip Martin Crete and younger brother Philippe Menard.

But for whatever reason, they flummoxed the top teams in Kamloops. "We play in big games and we do our best but we cannot aim to make it to the trials, to qualify in every grand slam, to qualify for the final four of the Brier," said Menard. "The type of team we have we can only focus on one thing."

That was after a round robin upset victory over Alberta that clinched them a playoff spot out of a crowded field. After making the playoffs, they were playing with house money. At one point in the week, Menard had a smile on his face just because his final draw of the round robin had meant something and he was in contention for a medal right up until the very end.

Menard, for the record, was a little thin and a little soft on his attempted shot in the ninth, but redeemed himself in the tenth end with a double takeout on his final stone to force an extra end. The Alberta skip Koe, however, wore down Quebec, peeling guard after guard and guaranteeing himself an open draw to the eight-foot for the win. In late night, frosty conditions at Interior Savings Centre, it wasn't a gimme shot, but Koe is too good and experienced to let Quebec win another game thanks to a mistake. Alberta won 9-8 in 11 ends.

So it will be Koe facing off against Morris for the gold and the 2014 Brier title, while Menard gets a third crack at Stoughton, having beaten him twice already on the week, for the bronze. No matter what the result, nobody can deny that the Quebec underdog rink made their imprint on the curling world this week with an impressive run towards the end of the tournament, winning five straight games after a 3-4 start and coming within a shot of the gold medal game.