THUNDER BAY – Al Hackner was pretty happy to be back at Port Arthur Curling Club.
Heading into Wednesday night’s Tbaytel Major League of Curling Draw 11, Hackner was a perfect 3-0 at the Egan Street rink.
It’s the polar opposite of his record at the Kakabeka Curling Club, where Team Hackner is 1-3 this season, including a pair of back-to-back defeats that dropped the veteran rink to 4-3 and battling for their playoff lives.
Back on more familiar ice, the former two-time world champion turned things around against young skip Dallas Burgess.
Hackner opened with a deuce in the first, took two more in the third and stole another three in the fourth to put the game out of reach early, and went on to an impressive 8-2 win that upped his record to 5-3, good for a fourth-place tie with Ben Mikkelsen, winner of three straight.
“It was a good win for us. We just lost our last two games in a row. To go on a three-game slide would really put us in jeopardy to make the playoffs. Every win is big for us now. We’re playing most of our games against teams that are either ahead of us or tied with us,” Hackner said.
“We’re going to have to stay strong. We get a bye next week and don’t have to play at Kakabeka, where we’ve lost all three of our games. We seem to struggle out there a bit and we seem to be onto the ice here.”
Hackner said a pair of missed hit-and-rolls by Team Burgess opened the door for the steal of three.
“We were piling rocks in the house to the point where we were running out of places to put them,” Hackner said.
Burgess came short with his first one, which Hackner then nosed to force his opponent wide on his final stone.
“He slid too far and we stole three.”
With five wins, Hackner kept pace with Burgess’s father, Bryan, who made a hit-and-stick for three with his final rock of the night to earn an 8-5 win over top-seeded Dylan Johnston (6-2), who dropped out of first place with the loss, a half game behind Krista McCarville.
“Early, Dylan was making all the shots and I made a key shot in the third end to get three that kept us in the game. Then it looked like he was going to get a big end in the fourth and we managed to steal,” the elder Burgess said.
“It was just hanging in there. There were a lot of swings both ways, but it worked out for us in the end.”
McCarville made the most of her opportunities to put away Mike Pozihun’s foursome. She stole two in the second, then singles in the third, fourth and fifth and held off Pozihun (4-4) to claim a 5-3 win, improving to 6-1 this season.
“Lots of times when you have the hammer and you keep giving up steals, you just need to turn it around. In that game we were on the winning end of that, where they kept giving us steals. Sometimes that’s just the way curling goes,” McCarville said.
In other action, Mike Desilets missed a double takeout in the eighth to score two for the win, but his shot to the button in the tiebreaker was closer and he eked out a 7-6 win over Gary Weiss. Mikkelson (5-3)scored a 6-4 triumph over Britney Malette (0-7), while Mike McCarville (3-5) scored three in the first en route to a 7-2 win over Frank Morissette (4-3).
