When the final day of the round robin at the 2024 Scotties Tournament of Hearts began on Thursday, both rinks out of British Columbia had a good shot at making the playoffs.
Both Clancy Grandy’s rink out of Vancouver and Corryn Brown’s rink out of Kamloops needed to win their final round robin to secure a spot in the final six this weekend.
Unfortunately, both teams lost to rinks out of Manitoba, Grandy to Kate Cameron and Brown to Kaitlin Lawes, which ended their journey at this year’s Canadian women’s curling championship.
The Thursday wins meant Team Cameron and Team Lawes would secure the final two spots in the playoffs, which will have a distinctly Manitoba feel.
Four of the final six teams standing at the 2024 Scotties are from Manitoba, as Kerri Einarson’s Team Canada rink is out of Gimli, Man., while Jennifer Jones’ rink plays out of Winnipeg, Man.
Both Einarson and Jones will lead their rinks into battle this afternoon, with a chance to set up an all-Manitoba battle on Saturday to determine which team advances to Sunday’s final.
Einarson will take on Rachel Homan’s undefeated Ontario rink, while Jones will go up against Selena Sturmay’s Alberta rink that should have the home crowd behind them in Calgary.
Whichever teams lose today will form the bottom bracket of the playoffs with Cameron and Lawes’ third-place rinks.
One of those four teams will win two straight matchups tonight and Saturday afternoon to emerge from the bottom bracket into the semifinal.
There, they will face whichever team wins this afternoon, but loses Saturday night, to decide who advances to the final against the team that escapes the top bracket with back-to-back wins.
Hopefully you were able to follow along with that, we know it’s a very confusing bracket as it typically is in curling competitions.
The bottom line is that a 2024 Scotties champion will be crowned on Sunday night at the WinSport Event Centre at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary.
As always, you can catch all of this weekend’s Scotties playoff action on TSN.
