This Friday, December 11th, marks the 10-year anniversary of Brad Gushue, Mark Nichols, Russ Howard, Jamie Korab and Mike Adam winning the 2005 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials to earn the right to represent Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
It was an unbelievable run at the Trials for a team deemed to have “no chance” — Gushue charged through the round robin with an 8-1 record and capped it all off with an 8-7 victory over Jeff Stoughton in the final.
Over the next few days our oral history series will examine that miracle week for Team Gushue. In Part 2, let’s take a look back at some of the other teams, specifically the teams skipped by John Morris and Glenn Howard.
Oral History of the 2005 Canadian Olympic Trials: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Morris was just shy of his 27th birthday at the start of the 2005 Trials, but was already an accomplished skip entering the event. He was a two-time world junior champion and finished runner-up at the 2002 Brier playing with the likes of Craig Savill and Brent Laing in Ontario before he moved west to Alberta. His new crew featured third Kevin Koe, second Marc Kennedy, and lead Paul Moffatt captured the Players’ Championship in 2004 and qualified for the Trials by finishing second at the Canada Cup later that year. Kennedy, who was 23 at the time of the Trials, shared how the team formed.
Marc Kennedy, Team Morris, second: John decided to move to Alberta from Ontario. I was just coming out of juniors. I had played John in juniors a few times and the spring before he moved out here, the Players’ Championship was in Leduc, which is really close to where I live and I was lucky enough to play in it with Willie Lyburn. John and I had a beer there together and he talked about maybe moving out west and if I’d be interested in playing if he did and obviously I said yes. Then he decided to make the move. He’d been playing against Kevin Koe in men’s for a few years so that was a pretty natural fit. John was bringing his friend Paul out to live with him and Paul was a pretty good curler out of Ontario so that’s kind of how things came together. For being a pretty young team and being a little bit wild at the time we had some pretty good success.
Brent Laing, Team Howard, second: That was an interesting team. At the time, Kevin Koe was playing third for John. Obviously they had done reasonably well, they won the Players’ Championship the year before. Coming in, again, they would have been in a similar boat to us; a team everyone knew could play really well but they weren’t favourites to win by any means. They would have been not a long shot for the playoffs, some teams would have picked them to make it, but most guys probably would not have picked them to make the playoffs, similar to us. Certainly looking back now you can see how much talent they had with John skipping and Kevin in third, Marc was playing second, and a good friend of mine, Paul Moffatt — who I went to university with, lived with and played university curling with — was playing lead and then on the bench was Benny Hebert. They certainly had the horses to win and they had a great week.
Brad Gushue, Team Gushue, skip: They definitely had more of a chance going in than we did or people were giving them more of a chance. They had a lot more success with the team (than us). They had Kevin Koe, who was a few years older than we are and Marc Kennedy was around our age.
Kennedy: It was interesting. We had quite a different group of personalities. Kevin Koe and John Morris are quite different people but we had a goal of trying to get to the Olympics so that pointed us all in the right direction. Paul was a great team guy. Kevin and I got along immediately. John was a good leader. He was trying to get the best out of some young guys. The chemistry was actually really good. We had a lot of fun. We took it seriously and we wanted to win but we were young guys enjoying being on the road and on tour. We made sure we had a lot of fun along the way. That was no different at the Olympic Trials. That was an event where people were really starting to take the Olympics seriously and guys were taking the sport to a new level. We went into that event with the goal of having some fun and we did.
Mark Nichols, Team Gushue, third: Same as ours, tons of talent. They’re all still top players; three of the members of that team are still top players today. We had played a few of them in juniors. We knew that when you get into a situation like that, all of the players there, whether they’re young or old, they make all the shots it’s just kind of who does it at the right time. The talent is there, it doesn’t matter which player you can pick out from that event it’s really, really good.
Laing: It was quite the team and looking back at all of the different teams over the years and see a lot of the same names and see now just on different teams and those were the guys who have made it their priority to put in the time and effort in that’s necessary to play at the top level. That was certainly a great team and any team with Johnny Mo at the helm or even Johnny Mo on the team is fun to watch because everybody knows he never fails to entertain and he seems to always find a way to be in the mix coming into big events. No matter what team he plays on he finds a way to win those games and get into the big games. That was no different back then.
Morris’s former teammates weren’t left hanging in Ontario. Glenn Howard and Richard Hart were in need of a new front-end for the 2004-05 season and the first names that popped into their heads were Laing and Savill. Fortunately for them the pair were eager to join, eventually becoming one of the most dominant teams in the province’s history. Back in the fall of 2005, however, they were just in their second season together and hadn’t even been to the Brier together yet, but the tour wins were starting to pile up and they earned their spot for the Trials by being ranked third on the Canadian Team Ranking System the previous season.
Glenn Howard, Team Howard, skip: We didn’t really know each other that well, obviously Richie and I played several years together but getting Brent and Craig into the mix was a big part of our success over the next 10 years but those first couple years it took a little while. We were still a little bit green. We had to get to know each other and get used to everyone’s nuances, deliveries and releases and that sort of thing. It was a beginning of a really great relationship and a hell of a good team.
Laing: The chemistry was great from day one. I think our first year together might have been 04-05 and then the Trials happened the following year in December of 2005. We hit it off right away, we got along really well on and off the ice. We lucked out in how well we did get along. Obviously we knew that Glenn and Rich got along and Craig and I had known each other for a long time and we got along but the four of us together even with the slight age difference with Rich being 10 years older and Glenn being 16 years older than Craig and I. So you never know. We had known Glenn and Rich on tour and thought they were great guys and otherwise we wouldn’t have wanted to play with them. It turned out great, the chemistry was just super easy right from day one. It’s what made that team special. We had a lot of success but that was a big reason for that success was how much respect we had for each other and how well we got along on and off the ice.
Richard Hart, Team Howard, third: For our team in the 2005 Trials in Halifax we were still a new team. That was our second season together. Our team dynamics were terrific. We were having a great time playing together and we had a perfect mix of young, youthful players and older, experienced guys, but we were definitely unproven. We had not been to a Brier together or a worlds and that would have been our first major event together.
Howard: At that point we hadn’t (even been to the Brier together). We knew that we had a really good squad and it was just a matter of proving it after that. You get some of that experience, the four of us together. You can’t just put four guys together and expect to win. You know you want to do that but you really got to go out onto the ice and get used to each other, on and off, and that takes time. We did that. It took a little bit of time for us but we sort of proved that after it was all said and done.
Alternates and fifth players were a key part of the narrative surrounding the Trials with Gushue bringing in two-time world champion Russ Howard, who came in to play calling the game while throwing second stones. Glenn Howard went with the obvious call selecting former (and future) teammate Wayne Middaugh.
Howard: He’s a good buddy of mine. I had won a world championship with Wayne back in 1993. He had won a world championship as a skip in 1998. We’d been knocking heads for so many years. I curl with him every Tuesday night at home. I knew what he was made of. The beauty of Wayne is he’s probably the most versatile player out there. He can play any position and be good at it. So if I went down and I was hurt, one of the best skips in the world was going to come in to replace me and he could do that at any other position so that more or less was what I was thinking.
Hart: Wayne and Glenn are long-time friends. We brought Wayne thinking that he could help add some experience to our team. Unlike Gushue, who sort of had planned all along to bring Russ into the lineup, we had no plans of having Wayne being a playing fifth man. He was just there in case of injury.
Laing: Wayne’s experience and his talent as a player, if anything were to ever happen to one of us Wayne could come in and play anywhere and play well. At the time he was one of the best skips in the world still so it was a pretty easy decision. He’s really good buddies with Glenn and I think we thought it would be a great asset to have him around, a great guy to match rocks for us and scouting other teams if we wanted and obviously a great guy to fill in. I didn’t know Wayne that well at the time and neither did Craig, and he ended up being great for us and did everything you could ask of a fifth man. So it was a pretty easy decision. Anytime you can add somebody to the team with his resume and skills set, it’s a pretty easy call.
Meanwhile, Morris also added a familiar face: 22-year-old Ben Hebert, who was still playing in his native Saskatchewan but had filled in on their team previously at the Canada Cup.
Kennedy: Our choice for a fifth wasn’t as much about could we bring in a top-level player to help us out if we needed him. Not that Benny isn’t a top-level player but he wasn’t going to be stepping in to play back-end like a Russ Howard or a Wayne Middaugh. Ours was more about a chemistry thing. Ben had played with us at the Canada Cup earlier that year when Paul couldn’t be there and we had some success, we ended up losing in the semifinals to Kevin Martin, so Ben fit in really good with our team and that was the reason we chose him as a fifth.
The front-runners going into the Trials were a pair of Edmonton-based teams skipped by Randy Ferbey and Kevin Martin. Ferbey had won four of the past five Brier tournaments, plus three world titles, while Martin played with the same crew who was victorious at the previous Trials in 2001 and earned the silver medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Jeff Stoughton and Glenn Howard weren’t too far behind while Gushue, Morris, Jay Peachey, Pat Ryan, Mark Dacey and Shawn Adams were the darkhorses.
Kennedy: For us the thought was Kevin Martin and Randy Ferbey were the two favourites for sure. Stoughty was really close to that top three and the rest of us we kind of fell into the same group of anybody can beat anybody so Brad was in that group with us. We were probably the bottom three ranked teams at the time: Brad, ourselves, and Jay Peachey, it was going to be a challenge for him to do well. We kind of grouped the rest of those guys together and thought if we could beat those teams and if we lose to Kevin and Randy we’d still end up with a pretty good record. So it was really interesting to see how things played out, very interesting.
Nichols: They were the best teams in the country at the time. You could make the argument for any team at that event. A lot of them had won Briers, been to the Brier finals, that sort of thing. Kevin and Randy, they’re two of the best players to have ever played the game as well. You would have to think that they were the favourites going into that event.
Laing: I think at the time we would have been kind of middle of the pack. I don’t think many teams expected us to win the Trials. We were still a fairly new team and still trying to find our way. We hadn’t even been to a Brier yet; Glenn hadn’t been to a Brier as a skip yet. We had some success in our first year getting to some finals and I think by then we had won in Gander. Obviously that earned us our spot into the Trials but going in, certainly the four of us, the five of us including Wayne, and coach Scott Taylor, we had a very good chance of making the playoffs and winning. I mean, that’s why we played and that’s what our goal was putting the team together was we wanted to win those Trials and get into the Olympics. But going in at that time, no, we certainly weren’t the favourites.
Howard: You’ve got the best-of-the-best and somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. Not all of the top teams are going to end up with winning records and that’s what you have to realize when you’re going into that sort of week. Strange things happen when it becomes a national championship or obviously for the Olympics, to go to the Olympics. It plays a little bit harder on your nerves, it’s a different dynamic. Some of the top teams didn’t do so well and sometimes that happens.
Special thanks to Brad Gushue, Mark Nichols, Glenn Howard, Marc Kennedy, Brent Laing and Richard Hart for sharing their thoughts. Join us tomorrow for Part 3 as we examine how the Trials actually turned out.