A night curling fans have long waited for.
Curling!
The Scotties Tournament of Hearts hits the pebbled ice with a new format that gets rid of the page playoff format and increases the number of quality teams, while also increasing the importance of the round-robin and then championship round.
Gone is the page playoff format.
The first-place team after the two-part round robin gets an automatic bye to the final, with the top two left to battle in the semi-final.
As well, the field is now 18 teams. Well up from where it used to be, which was 12 less than a decade ago.
Although the increase is covid related, more and more quality teams are in the national championship.
These are all things I could get used to but I’m not going to spend too much time critiquing formats because we finally have curling back.
And credit should go to Curling Canada for doing the heavy lifting on getting their sport back on the ice.