 Quebec's Jean-Michel Menard (Photo: Curling Canada) defeated Japan's Shinya Abe 4-2 to open the Stu Sells Toronto Tankard with a win. By Connor Simms, #45 World-Ranked Jean-Michel Menard, as skip, throwing third stones, and Felix Asselin throwing the last stones, along with Martin Crete and Jean-Francois Trepanier on the front end, are competing at their second event of the season. Menard was at the Invitational Valleyfield event in Quebec last weekend. The team went a perfect 6-0, defeating Quebec's Pierre-Luc Morisette in the final. This week, they are at the Stu Sells Toronto Tankard. Last season, they went 4-3 at this event, losing the C-qualifier to Japan's Shinya Abe. This season, a new format has been introduced for this event. There will be six pools of four teams. After round-robin play within each pool, teams will advance to placement games. Teams ranked 1-8 will compete for a spot in the quarterfinals, while teams 9-16 will also compete. The losers of the 9-16 placement games will be eliminated, and the winners will face the losers of the 1-8 placement games to complete the playoff bracket. From there, a standard single-elimination playoff bracket will follow. They took on Abe in their first game. Menard won the opening draw to the button for the hammer. After blanks in the first three ends, Menard opened the game with a single in the fourth end. Abe too their single right back. Menard got the first deuce in the sixth end. Abe was unable to respond, settling for their single in the seventh. Ultimately, Menard got their single in the eighth, taking the 4-2 victory. In their next game, they will face Greg Smith of Newfoundland and Labrador at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) on Friday. They will wrap up their round robin on Saturday against Nova Scotia's Matthew Manuel at 11:15 am ET. Catch the action live on the CurlingZone YouTube page. Follow the linescores on the CurlingZone website. |
A five at the opening end of their first-ever match together in a major international competition sent Katie McMillan and Angus Bryce on their way to a dominant victory over the USA at the ACE & Company World Mixed Doubles Championships in Geneva.
