'Roar of the Rings' - Overview

Starting on Sunday December 6th, what I think is the biggest curling tournament in Canadian history will kick off at Rexall Place in Edmonton, AB. The 2009 ‘Roar of the Rings’ will feature 8 women’s and 8 men’s team vying for the rights to represent Canada at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

The winners will be blessed with the opportunity to represent Canada, yet simultaneously cursed with expectation. Like hockey, anything short of Gold from our Men’s and Women’s teams will certainly be viewed as a disappointment, only to be magnified by the fact that these are a ‘home games’. Come February, the eyes of a country will follow our eight representatives over the course of the round robin games, and hopefully through to the Gold Medal Game.

It’s for the right to undergo this journey that the best teams Canada has to offer will gather starting next week…

Format
Thankfully, the ‘Roar of the Rings’ itself will undertake a much simplier process than the qualification rounds leading up to it did. If you need an example of the complexity of qualification, just check out the ‘Road to the Roar’ tournament bracket. Yeesh.

On both the men’s and women’s side, teams start off with a round-robin, after which the Top-3 teams advance to the playoffs. The top team from the round-robin advances directly to the final, with Teams 2 and 3 playing in a semi-final. The winner of the final gets to wear the Maple Leaf. Couldn’t be simplier.

In the event that there is a tie in the standings for the final playoff berths after the round-robin, tiebreak games will be played…

Qualified Teams
The list of potential Olympic teams is impressive to say the least. Most other countries would be extactic to have even one team of this calibire represent them. We are lucky enough to have our pick. If able to, we’d me more than capable of sweeping the podium on both sides.

Men’s
Glenn Howard
Kevin Martin
Kevin Koe
Randy Ferbey
Jeff Stoughton
Pat Simmons
Jason Gunnlaugson
Wayne Middaugh

Women’s
Jennifer Jones
Shannon Kleibrink
Cheryl Bernard
Stefanie Lawton
Crystal Webster
Krista McCarville
Kelly Scott
Amber Holland

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be doing a team-by-team preview of each team. Be sure to check out the Men’s Preview and the Women’s Preview.

Draw, Standings and TV
Similar to the ‘Road to the Roar’, I will be tracking the results of the week. For the sake of clarity, this has been broken out into a separate post, which of course you can check out right here.

TSN will be broadcasting the event the whole way through. The majority of coverage will be on the TSN main network, with the exception of the Dec. 6th and Dec. 7th evening draws….which will be on TSN2. The big ones to watch out for are of course the finals:
Women’s – December 12th – 8:00 PM ET
Men’s – December 13th – 3:00 PM ET

Link List
A few other items to pass along, mainly pages that are way more official than I am:
CCA Official Event Site
Event Preview Magazine