It's still 'shock rock'
It didn't get any easier for Nedohin yesterday
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
Maybe one day Dave Nedohin will bump into Steve Smith and compare notes.
Maybe someday. But yesterday, misery wasn't looking for company.
While his teammates flew home from Saskatoon on a flight full of Brier fans, Nedohin drove back with his wife and 20-month-old daughter.
"I didn't sleep," said the goat of the most colossal collapse, the most major meltdown in the history of making history at the Brier. "I kept thinking of what I could have done and should have done and about everything we missed out on because of the shots I missed."
Smith scored on his own net. The Edmonton Oilers, as a result, didn't win five Stanley Cups in a row. Nedohin gassed shots on the eighth end and gagged on the would-be game-saver on the 10th to end hos team's record run at three in a row.
As Nedohin, wife Heather and daughter Halle drove through the two provinces, he thought about so many things.
"I thought about adding to the history books, the Olympic funding we lost, the TSN Skins Game spot we didn't get. More than anything I Iove to wear that maple leaf on my back and not being able to go to the world championships hurts most," he said of the chance to be the first team in history to win three of those in a row, too.
The Edmonton 2005 Brier organizing committee, which had hit the 5,000 mark in all-event passes during the game, had been formulating a strategy not only to make Nedohin, Randy Ferbey, Scott Pfeifer and Marcel Rocque poster boys, but to pay them to tour around the province in the summer, to hype their chance of winning five in a row. What happens to that now?
ABOUT TICKET SALES
Certainly ticket sales, which had been ballistic until Sunday, aren't likely to continue to spike like they might have with a feel-good fourth-in-a-row to bring back and another month of curling visibility as they went to the Worlds.
There's just so much stuff they thought of yesterday as the reality of blowing an 8-4 lead after seven ends, and losing 10-9, hit home as they travelled home.
"I was kind of getting to like being in all of those parades," said Pfeifer, trying to make himself laugh. "I feel the same as I did the moment the game ended yesterday. I'm still replaying shots over and over."
Rocque said he could sum up his feelings coming home in one word.
"Numbness," he said.
"It's a situation which is almost unacceptable for us. We never give away games like that. And we did it to them twice."
The first time the Nova Scotia rink ended their 23-game Brier winning streak. The second time they ended their three-in-a-row run.
"A couple of shots got away from us. Take back two shots, both on the eighth ends in those two games, and we run the table. We're 13-0 two years in a row."
"Choke" is the ugliest word in sport and dealing with that is the most difficult, said Rocque.
"The thing that's hardest to swallow is that we gave it away. We beat ourselves. And it all is now starting to sink in, what we gave away. It was more than one game."
THERE'S NO PRETENDING
Ferbey said there's no pretending that what happened didn't happen.
"Under the circumstances, to lose the biggest game of curling the way we did is pretty tough to take. We're just going to have to find a way to deal with it. We're still in a state of disbelief. I don't think any one person is any more devastated than the next. This game is going to take a long time before it goes away. We're still in shock."
Rocque says they will live to win again.
"Maybe this had to happen to us.
"Something like this happened to us once before and it ended up being good for us," he said of Nedohin missing a last-rock shot in the semis of their first Worlds in Switzerland to cost them gold.
They've all said it before. Nedohin is in a tough spot with this team throwing last rocks, and with Ferbey calling the game and having his name on the rink. If they win it's 'Ferbey Wins.' If they lose, it's 'Nedohin Loses.'
"I think my team will keep me," said Nedohin.
"Dave is feeling like he let us down and it shouldn't be like that," said Rocque.
"He missed one four years ago and we bounced back and became stronger because of it. He's the best shot-maker in the world and he'll bounce back. This will make us hungrier to be in the Edmonton Brier next year and make us hungrier to be in the Olympics."
Maybe two years from now they'll be in Turin, Italy, and Dave Nedohin will make the big shot on the final end - the one Kevin Martin didn't make in Salt Lake City - and trade this one in for that.
Maybe next year they'll win their fourth Brier. But they can never go for four in arow again.
"Why not?" said Pfeifer.
He's 25. He'll heal first.
