After an impressive but less than dominating week in the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, Heather Nedohin’s Alberta foursome closed out round-robin play on a high Thursday night at the Centrium.
Nedohin’s Edmonton rink defeated Heather Smith-Dacey of Nova Scotia 7-6 to qualify for the playoffs and will face Marie-France Larouche of Quebec in the 3-4 Page playoff game Saturday at 11 a.m.
The 1-2 contest will be played tonight at 7:30 p.m., with first-place Jennifer Jones of Manitoba taking on B.C.’s Kelly Scott.
The loser will face the winner of the 3-4 contest in a semifinal at 4 p.m. Saturday with the championship final set for 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
“I’m just so excited and proud of our team,” said Nedohin, who finished round-robin play with a 7-4 record, officially placing fourth behind Manitoba (9-2), B.C. (8-3) and Quebec (7-4).
“Our girls played stellar the entire week. Our goal was to make the playoffs and we did.
“I thought we had a really solid week. We had some misses where other teams capitalized, but that’s our sport. But you know what – the moment is we made the playoffs.
“Right now I’m over the top proud. Our team came here to make the playoffs and we did it right here in Alberta.”
Meanwhile, Amber Holland and Team Alberta finished on a low, falling 11-5 to Saskatchewan champ Michelle Englot and finishing 6-5 and out of the playoffs.
Holland’s crew started fast but dropped four of their last five games.
“We just didn’t capitalize on our opportunities. We started well but we just needed to be sharper and we weren’t,” said Holland.
For the foursome based out of Kronau, Sask., the reign as Team Canada was a short one.
“It sucks, but it’s been a great year,” said Holland.
“We enjoyed being Team Canada for a year and it was fun wearing the Maple Leaf at the Scotties. We’d like to do it again.”
Although her team struggled down the stretch, Holland was favoured to defeat Englot in the final round-robin draw considering the Saskatchewan champs came in with a 4-6 record and also struggled mightily over the last few days.
“I don’t know, Michelle’s team obviously won our province and they’re a great team,” said Holland. “You can always say this person should beat that person but you have to make the shots to do it and we didn’t do that today.”
Indeed, Holland shot a mere 57 per cent against Englot and for all intents and purposes lost the game by allowing a steal of three in the seventh end.
Team Canada struck back for three of their own in the eighth end, but gave up four in the ninth and conceded.
Meanwhile, Alberta was locked in a tighter battler with Nova Scotia and were tied 4-4 after six ends. However, Nedohin picked up a deuce in the seventh and stole a single point in the eighth end to take control.
Alberta gave up one in the ninth and another in the 10th when it didn’t matter as Smith-Dacey was out of rocks. The Nova Scotia team, the bronze-medalists at last year’s Scotties, finished 4-7 this time around.
Nedohin, just tickled by the fact her team was advancing, seemed surprised that she has a day off prior to the 3-4 Page playoff game.
“We do? Then look out HeartStop lounge,” she joked.
“Really, we just learned that we’re in the 3-4 game, but to be honest this team has never made it easy on ourselves. So we’re just keeping face like we normally do.”
All jokes aside, the Alberta skip said she and her team will welcome the break.
“We’ll practise tomorrow but right now we’re just going to enjoy this moment, we’re going to take a breather,” she said. “We just played 11 games and a day off is OK for our front end and A-OK for our back end.”
Alberta put itself in solid playoff contention with a 10-3 win over Heather Strong and Newfoundland/Labrador Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, B.C. beat Kim Dolan of Prince Edward Island 8-5 and Team Canada lost 7-5 to Kerry Galusha of Northwest Territories/Yukon.
Quebec beat Tracy Horgan of Ontario 7-5 in the morning draw and lost 7-4 to Manitoba in the afternoon.
gmeachem@www.reddeeradvocate.com