The Marla Mallett Factor!!

I’m sitting on the media bench here during the Brier final so I though I would take the chance to update our women’s standings prior to the Canada Cup and I will do the same for the men tomorrow!  I’ve entitled this blog entry The Mallett Factor as Marla Mallett and her BC foursome definitely changed things around with their outstanding showing at this year’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts.   This is a great example of how important this year is and how a number of teams simply decided to focus on this season because there will be 8 spots into the Pre-Trials from this season. I will leave the final four predictions until after the Canada Cup.  Needless to say, with Jennifer Jones winning the STOH, the final four spots could very well be filled with the 2 and 3 year points totals.  If you sit down and complete the caculus equation yourself you’ll see that Kleibrink has a virtual lock one of the spots – the dust simply has to settle to determine which one.  I can make a more concrete prediction after the completion of the Canada Cup. We continue to have our 8 teams already qualified: Jennifer Jones, Kelly Scott, Sherry Anderson, Shannon Kleibrink, Cheryl Bernard, Stefanie Lawton, Amber Holland, and Sherry Middaugh. We now know that this year’s STOH spot will be relegated to the CTRS as Jones has already qualified.  The CTRS spot is still up for grabs as Marie France Larouche is knocking and there are still big points to be had at the Canada Cup and the Player’s Championship.    That said Kleibrink will be pushing hard to win that title and all the other teams in the top 5 who could possibly win the CTRS title are already qualifed so it would be safe to assume that this spot will be pushed to this year’s CTRS as well.  We will continue to assume that one of the top 8 will win the Player’s and Canada Cup as well…….drum roll please: Therefore if the season was to end today Marie France Larouche would be awarded the first spot from the 2008/2009 season, Marla Mallett the second, Cathy King the third and Michelle Englot the fourth. The 13th spot, given to the highest 3-year point total, that are not already qualified, would go to Krista McCarville.  *Note when reading this table, Stefanie Lawton’s points are different then posted as they only had 2 of 4 registered players (from their 2006/2007 registered team) playing at the beginning of the year so a manual calculation will have to be done at the year’ end. The 14th and 15th spots, given to the highest 2 year point total, that are not already qualified, would go to Eve Belisle and Rachel Homan.  *Note: Heather Rankin’s team is currently in the top spot on the computer generated list, however because of a player change this season and a pregnancy that kept one player out of the line up at the start of this season their two year point total will have to be changed manual at year’s end.  They then only had 2 of 4 registered players from their 2007/2008 season playing for part of the year. The 16th spot would then go to the highest non-qualified team from this year’s CTRS list and that would go to Heather Rankin! Please email me if you have any questions. I have gone through some detailed scenarios with a number of teams as the possibilities are endless.