A good day for Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia

Alberta’s Glen Hansen, Saskatchewan’s Max Kirkpatrick, Ontario’s Chris Gardner and Nova Scotia’s Brent MacDougall have finished day one at the 52nd edition of the Canadian Mixed Curling Championship at the North Bay Granite in North Bay, Ont., each with two wins in play Monday. Hansen, who represented Alberta at the 2006 Mixed in Whitehorse, ironically held off a stubborn Bob Smallwood of the Yukon 8-5. Hansen was up 4-0 after only two ends but needed a deuce in the sixth end plus a steal of one in the seventh to clinch it. Alberta is the only undefeated team in Pool A. Despite giving up a first end deuce to NL’s Gary Oke, Kirkpatrick and his Swift Current team grabbed three points in the second end followed by a steal of one in the third frame. Another deuce allowed him to coast home two up with last stone. The final score was 6-4. The Ottawa CC’s Gardner overcame a 4-1 deficit after three ends scoring seven points over the next three ends coasting to a 8-5 win over PEI’s Jamie Newson. The key end was a steal of four points in the fifth end. The final team to open play with two wins is the 2013 Canadian Mixed runner-up Brent MacDougall of Nova Scotia. The Mayflower CC team from Halifax was stingy in a 7-3 win over the host Northern Ontario team of Colin Koivula. The Thunder Bay skip scored but three singles in the game. Yukon (Smallwood), Northern Ontario (Koivula) and Québec (Wharry) are each level at a win and a loss after the day’s play. Wharry’s Montreal crew stole the final end from Manitoba’s Jared Kolomaya who faced a near impossible shot to try and salvage his day. Manitoba and PEI’s Newson drop to 0-2. Teams with the byes tonight were Nunavut’s Wade Kingdon (0-2), British Columbia’s Wes Craig (1-1), New Brunswick’s Scott Jones (1-1) and the NWT’s Jamie Koe (1-1) At the conclusion of the round robin, the top four teams in each pool advance to the championship round, with the teams playing the teams from the opposite pool, carrying forward their win-loss records for only those games involving the advancing teams. Meanwhile, the bottom three teams in each pool will go to the Seeding Pool, where they will compete against the three teams from the opposite pool. The teams carry forward their win-loss record only from the games involving the other two teams in their round-robin pool. This will determine seedings for the 2016 Canadian Mixed in Toronto. At the conclusion of the championship round on Friday, two semifinals will take place on Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. ET, pitting 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3. The two winners then advance to the final Saturday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. while the two losing teams meet in the bronze-medal game at the same time. In addition, all games throughout the competition are now eight (not 10) ends. Also, no tiebreaker games will be played at the conclusion of either round. Instead, any ties for position will be determined by accumulated pre-game Last-Shot-Draw results. The winning team will represent Canada at the 2015 World Mixed Curling Championship, Sept. 12-19 at a site to be announced by the World Curling Federation. For media requests during the event, contact Danny Lamoureux on site at (613) 878-3682 or [email protected]. For event, team and draw information, visit www.curling.ca/2015mixed-en. Click here for a downloadable copy of the rosters. Draw scores/results will be immediately available on the Canadian Curling Association’s website, www.curling.ca. Up-to-date standings can be found here: 2015 Mixed Curling Standings. Photos from the 2015 Canadian Mixed Curling Championship can be found here (Brian Doherty Photography).