Plane truth about Ferb
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
SASKATOON -- It ain't braggin' if you can do it. And Dave Nedohin says they're going to do it.
He's not guaranteeing. Just saying.
"I'm confident we'll get the 'W'," said the three-time Brier MVP of winning the rematch of the only game the three-in-a-row Alberta rink has lost in the last 26.
"I'm confident we'll play as well as we did today," added Nedohin of 9-3 and 10-3 rebound wins following the loss Wednesday which prevented the rink from becoming the first team to run the table in the regular round in back-to-back Briers.
It's Randy Ferbey vs. Mark Dacey and Ferbey's last rock thrower says there's no way he's going to gas this game like he did to the Nova Scotia team that ended their winning streak, the Bluenosed bunch they took care of to win their third title in last year's Brier final.
"I missed a shot in the eighth end and two in the 10th end, against them. I'm not going to do that again," he said of the loss which ended up leaving the Albertans with an identical 10-1 record with the Nova Scotians.
That may be true. But the Edmonton Avonair rink is going to have to do this like they've never had to do it before.
WHOLE NEW BIT OF BUSINESS
It's a whole new bit of Brier business for Ferbey in the 1-2 playoff game (TSN 12:30 a.m. Edmonton time.)
No hammer? No choice of rocks? What kind of production is this?
For the first time they're the '2' team not the '1' team.
"It's one more chance to win. We don't have last rock in it, but so what?" said Ferbey of the team which has gone 11-2, 11-2 and 13-0 in winning their first three Briers and never lost a game with the hammer and had the hammer in all six previous playoff games.
"There will be so many rocks in play I don't think it'll make much of a difference," said Ferbey.
"He's going to see a lot of granite."
Dacey says, yes, that's probably going to be true. Times two.
"We're going to have to come out with guns a-blazing," he said.
"The good thing about the 1-2 game is that the winner goes straight to the final and the loser gets a second chance. But you don't want to have to use it."
NOT LIKELY TO BE THE SAME GAME
Sure, says Dacey, it's not likely to be the same game as the one which stopped the streak.
"Dave missed three shots in the last couple of ends. You don't see that often."
But now Dacey has defeated Ferbey at the Brier. That has to count for something.
"At this level you never think somebody is unbeatable," says Dacey. "That's more for the fans and you guys."
The regular round of the Silver Anniversary Brier ended here last night with Alberta scoring 10-1 and 10-3 wins, but Dacey winning his last two games as well.
Brad Gushue of Newfoundland was on the wrong end of the 10-3 job and ended up with an 8-3 record to make it to tonight's 3-4 game against the winner of this morning's tie-breaker game between Jay Peachey of B.C. and 13-time Brier veteran Russ Howard of New Brunswick.
Peachey flew under the radar to make it to today. He gassed back-to-back games to Alberta and Saskatchewan on Sunday and was clobbered 8-1 by Newfoundland. But an 8-7 win here yesterday over Howard put him back in play.
"That was a new situation for me," said Howard of having to watch the evening draw as a spectator to find out if he had a playoff game.
Peachey lost to Dacey in the nightcap. And both the B.C. rink and the New Brunswick teams ended up at 7-4.
The Albertans prepped for the Gushue game by scoring six on the opening end against Quebec, removing Ferbey from the lineup after the second end to get fifth-man Dan Holowaychuk into the Brier for a second cameo appearance.
"That was probably the best end we ever played," said second Scott Pfeifer of the 9-2 shake-hands-after-six-ends win.
"Everyone made an absolute peach of a shot on all eight shots."
The Albertans were a giddy group in the afternoon game.
"It was a good way to get our fifth man to get into a game and Dave wanted to hold the broom," he said of fourth-rock thrower Nedohin.
"He said 'You go, I want to skip.' I said 'Go at 'em. He made a few questionable calls," joked Ferbey.
"That was a very well-played game by our team," said Ferbey of the 10-3 win over Gushue.
"We showed experience in that game."
Gushue, if nothing else, showed a sense of humour.
In a position to roll double boxcars - a six ender in both games, when Nedohin's rock came into the house Gushue playfully pushed his out of the way and quickly pulled it back, so Nedohin's rock would sail through the house.
With a big grin on his face, he then shook hands.
Last year in Halifax, Ferbey and Gushue were writing headlines spewing venom at each other in public. Now it's all fun and games?
"We spent an hour together in the Brier Patch," said Gushue of patching those things up before they played this one.
There's nothing that can't be cured in the Brier Patch.
