Emma Miskew kept herself in the fight for the playoffs while Chelsea Carey took a body blow Tuesday at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
Miskew’s Wild Card 3 rink improved to 3-3 with an easy 14-1 win over Brigitte MacPhail of Nunavut.
Carey missed on her last rock to give up a steal of three points as her Wild Card 2 team from Regina lost 9-4 to Tracy Fleury’s Wild Card 1 team, which is being skipped by Selena Njegovan. The loss dropped Carey to 2-3.
With the top three teams from each of the two pools advancing to the playoffs, three loses could be the limit to remain in contention.
Miskew said she already may need help from other teams to advance.
“That’s what happens when you lose a couple games and all the games we lost could have gone either way,” she said. “All we can do is control what we’re doing.”
Carey and Miskew meet Thursday night in a game that could decide one of the team’s fates.
Carey said she doesn’t pay attention to the standings or schedule.
“We don’t look at that stuff,” said the 37-year-old Winnipeg native, who won the Scotties in 2019 and 2016 skipping teams from Alberta and was third in 2014 representing Manitoba. “We’re not worried about whether or not we still have a chance or how many losses we need.
“That’s just not a helpful thing to be thinking about. We’re just grinding it out and at the end of the week we’ll take a look and see if we’re in the playoffs or not.”
In other afternoon games Sarah Hill from Newfoundland and Labrador won her second game of the week with an 8-5 upset of Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville. Saskatchewan’s Penny Barker used a 9-6 win over Susanne Birt of P.E.I. to improve to 3-2.
Andrea Crawford of New Brunswick leads the Pool A standings at 5-0, followed by Wild Card 1, with Njegovan skipping because Fleury continues to isolate due to COVID-19, at 4-1. Northern Ontario and Saskatchewan are 3-2 with Miskew 3-3. Carey and Newfoundland and Labrador are 2-3. P.E.I is 2-4 and Nunavut 0-6.
With Rachel Homan representing Canada in mixed doubles at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Miskew became skip of the Wild Card 3 team from the Ottawa Curling Club.
In eight previous trips to the Scotties, Homan and Miskew never finished worse than third. The team won the Canadian championship three times, were world champions in 2017 and competed at the 2018 Olympics.
“I’m really not looking at the leaderboard,” said Miskew. “We just have to go out and play our game.”
During the morning draw, Kerri Einarson’s Team Canada improved to 5-0 with a 10-5 win over Mary-Anne Arsenault of B.C. while Kerry Galusha of the N.W.T. used an 8-6 victory to hand Manitoba’s Mackenzie Zacharias her first loss.
In other games, Alberta’s Laura Walker defeated Yukon’s Hailey Birnie 11-5 and Ontario’s Hollie Duncan picked up a first win with an 8-6 victory over Nova Scotia’s Christina Black.
Einarson, the two-time defending champion from Gimli, Man., leads Pool A with a 5-0 record. The N.W.T. and Manitoba are 3-1 while Alberta is 3-2. Nova Scotia and Quebec are 2-2, followed by Ontario and B.C. at 1-4. The Yukon is 0-4.
The competition is divided into two pools of nine teams ranked by their final standing on the Canadian Team Ranking System as of Jan. 10. There will be an eight-game round robin with the top three teams in each pool advancing to an expanded Page playoff system.
Carey plays P.E.I. on Wednesday morning before her showdown with Miskew in the evening, then faces Crawford’s New Brunswick rink Thursday.
Besides Carey, Miskew plays Saskatchewan on Thursday.