The Top Teams Move on to the Play-offs

After watching the Brier all week (well, whenever I could sneak a peek away from my work), I had the impression that as good a curler as Kevin Martin is, he just was not quite as good as the top three teams: Ontario, Manitoba, and NF/L. I was glad he made it to the play-offs, but the defeat of Alberta by Manitoba in the 3-4 game seemed reasonable, given their apparent abilities demonstrated throughout the week.

As we go into today's semi-final, I am confident that any one of these three teams will serve Canada well at the World's next month in Edmonton. That confidence makes me a bit less upset than I would otherwise be at the ice conditions in Hamilton. If one of the better teams were eliminated because of bad luck with debris on the ice, I would be more-than-disappointed (see here for more). But the ice conditions impart a randomness to the outcomes of the games that provides strong support for the use of the page play-off system, where the top two teams from the round robin are less likely to be eliminated from the final simply because of some random events on the ice.