Let me get this over right away. I was wrong about David Murdoch’s Scottish team.

I still believe the worlds field is a lot weaker than the Brier field – except for David Murdoch. There are two levels of teams at the World Championship level for men’s curling: Scotland and Canada, then everybody else. So, I don’t take that part of my previous post back. But I do take back what I said about Murdoch not being able to qualify for the Brier out of the more difficult provinces in Canada. Clearly, he can.

Who would have thought any team in the world could have beaten Kevin Martin three times in row? There were a lot of people (including me) who thought this team was close to curling invincibility. Teams all over Canada are going to be analyzing those three losses to see the strategy Murdoch employed to take down the giants. One loss to Scotland or anybody could have been considered a fluke, a bad game or lack of focus. Three losses clearly demonstrate an Achiles heel in the Martin machine.

Now the questions that come to my mind are how much are these three losses going to affect Kevin Martin and the rest of his squad? What about the strategy in the tenth end of the final? For a long, long time their minds are going to be occupied with thoughts of not peeling earlier in the end and, of course, throwing the first skip stone away. These are all things that have broken up many good teams.

We are all going to see just how strong of a unit Martin’s team is in the next year and whether they can avoid the team in-fighting that lesser teams suffer. It was clear that Ben Hebert and Marc Kennedy were less than happy with the play of John Morris in the final and we all saw Hebert’s reaction to Martin throwing away his second to last stone in the world final. If this team wants to win a gold medal at the Olympics in Vancouver next year, they will have to get over this loss very quickly. I guarantee you the teams of Glenn Howard, Randy Ferbey, Jeff Stoughton and Brad Gushue already smell blood in the water.

Martin first read of the prophecies of Nostradamus 20 years ago, and has come not only to put some faith in them, but also make decisions based in part on them.

“He’s right a lot, in my opinion,” said Martin of the controversial 16th-century figure, whose prophecies have been interpreted for centuries as foretelling various historic events. “I’m not a real book reader, but I watch any documentary on Nostradamus. It’s very interesting to me.

Did any of Nostradamus’ prophecies mention a curling team from Alberta winning 26 straight games in two Briers with some of the strongest fields ever?

Full story – Calgary Herald

A two-time Brier champ is reeling, while Alberta has a new team to watch next season — all the result of Sunday’s news that Chris Schille is returning home to Red Deer.

Schille, who announced Sunday that he was leaving Brad Gushue’s Newfoundland team because of revised residency restrictions in that province, will play next season on a potential powerhouse team featuring two-time world junior champ Charley Thomas of Airdrie, Adam Enright of Edmonton and D.J. Kidby, another former world junior champ out of Saskatchewan, who’s moving to Alberta later this year.

Full story – Calgary Herald

John Morris is a firefighter. He has mentored mentally challenged children. He obviously likes to help those in need.

That’s perhaps the boring side of Morris, the side some Canadian newspapers have put on the jump page. Headlines Morris has received the past few months deal with his curling family and his off-the-ice, bad-boy image.

Grand Forks Herald | WORLD MEN’S CURLING CHAMPIONSHIP: Canada has a fiery third in Morris