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When Manitoba's Jennifer Jones made that clutch in-off to win the 2005 Canadian crown, it was immediately compared to the one that Sandra Schmirler had made in the 1997 Olympic trials final -- "The shot heard around the curling world."
When Nova Scotia's Colleen Jones captured a record fourth Canadian championship in Brandon, 2002 -- the same place Schmirler had won her first of three in 1993 -- Jones took the moment to pay tribute to the late Saskatchewan skip.
"I will always rate Sandra's team as the greatest in the world -- of all time," Jones told Sun Media at the time. "To have done what they did -- three Worlds, Olympic gold -- we're still not close, and I don't want to be close.
"I still think that's a really special team ... We try to emulate them and copy that style. But that's all we are. We're imitators of them. We admire them a lot."
Jones, of course, would win two more Canadian crowns.
Schmirler's on-ice legacy was to not only change the boring way the women's game had been played but to capture Canada's first, and only, women's Olympic gold curling medal.
"She changed women's strategy," assessed Cathy Gauthier, who got a first-hand look at Schmirler's game as second for Connie Laliberte during the Manitoba hall-of-famer's heyday in the mid-1990s. "She was the first to really push the envelope and put a lot of stones in play.
"When I played with Connie, we played very defensively but when we played against Sandra, we had to change our game because she forced us to. She set the stage to play more aggressively and brought the gap between women's and men's a lot closer. Now, you find teams like Jennifer's that aren't comfortable just throwing the rocks up and down (defensively)."
Gauthier, of course, also played lead for Jones when she won that 2005 title and is now a TSN curling analyst.
"We weren't that aggressive," objected Joan McCusker, Schmirler's second. "I mean, we weren't Jennifer Jones. In the early days, we were a lean, green hitting machine. But when we went to the Worlds, we had to adapt to the four-rock (free-guard zone) rule and we grew to lead the way."
And the timing was right for them to capture Olympic gold.
"We were at our peak when curling got Olympic-medal status," said third Jan Betker. "And we were proud to wear that profile. That gave aspirations for others to do the same thing."
In fact, that gold medal had an immediate effect on curling in Saskatchewan.
"Ten years ago when they won the gold, the junior program attendance here just skyrocketed," said Cathy Trowell, Scotties Tournament of Hearts co-chair. "And for some of the juniors now, they know they can go for that gold themselves."
Saskatchewan junior women have won three national and one world championship since 1998. Its junior men have won two national and two world titles in the same time frame.
"That team inspired a lot of younger people to get into the game," said Manitoba's Lois Fowler, who played third for Brandon's Maureen Bonar when she lost the 1993 Canadian final to Schmirler. "I often wonder what would have happened if we had won. But it was probably meant to be because of what was ahead for Sandra."