Elite Curlers Adapt to New ‘No Tick’ Rule Designed to Bring More Excitement to Games – TSN.ca

No tick is here to stick with curling.

Canada adopted the new rule that the World Curling Federation tested at the men’s and women’s world championships earlier this year.

The “No Tick” rule will be played at the 2023 Canadian Men’s and Women’s Championships and playdowns to get there.

The tick shot as a strategy arose from the implementation of the free guard zone. Stones in front of the rings or guardians cannot be removed from play at the end until five stones have been thrown.

A well-executed Tick Shot forces these guards onto their wings, but keeps them in play and opens entry into the house.

Now a guard on or partially on the center line cannot be touched until five stones have been delivered.

The chances that a team with Hammer will come home in a tie game, or in an extra end, are approaching 90 percent according to the WCF.

So the rationale for the change is to make the outcome less predictable, keeping a game on track until the last stone is thrown, and reducing the number of empty ends in a game.

No tick will end up giving the team without a last rock advantage a chance to drag the center guard into the rings and potentially force the opponent to throw more difficult shots in order to score with the hammer.

“It offers interesting curling,” reigning Canadian men’s champion Brad Gushue told The Canadian Press.

“Certainly on the men’s side where teams have gotten so good at making the tick and when they’re not doing a double or triple peel to take out any chance of stealing, it’s probably not a bad idea to to have it.

“We look at the stats, some of the top teams are 95 percent when they bring the hammer home. It doesn’t give much hope to a team or a spectator watching…it’s not going to be much entertainment if 95 per cent of the time there’s going to be a surefire outcome.”

The WCF didn’t allow a tick at its convention last month after checking it at the Women’s World Championship in Prince George, BC in March and the Men’s World Championship in Las Vegas in April.

The top teams were already familiar with it, as the Grand Slams started testing No Tick back in 2019.

They’re playing a hybrid version of the rule at this week’s HearingLife Tour Challenge, which ends Sunday in Grande Prairie, Alta.

Only at the eighth and additional end no tick is effective.

“Either or, either for the whole game or not,” said Canadian women’s champion Kerri Einarson, adding that she wasn’t averse to the no-tick.

“It makes the end of a game a lot more interesting, especially if you’re tied or lost there’s still a good chance you could potentially steal. We definitely found different types of strategies to do that.”

Curling Canada wants next year’s Tournament of Hearts winners, Tim Horton’s Brier and Scotties, to have played no tick when they head off to the Worlds.

Gushue’s feelings about the change are mixed because he’s not yet convinced that no tick will do what it’s supposed to do. He would have liked to see more data before the launch.

“Are we going to see, instead of 95 percent of teams winning with the hammer, is it going to 90 or 75?” he wondered. “I don’t think we have a large enough data set to say how big the impact will be.

“If it’s a five percent change, is that enough to change the game and possibly confuse viewers a little bit more? If it’s 20 percent, it makes sense from an entertainment standpoint.”

The three-time Brier champion conceded that he won’t like a tad when his team is chasing in the final end, but will love less when Hammer comes home tied.

“As a team, we always worked the first nine ends to make sure we brought the hammer home tied,” Gushue said. “If you do that, your chances may decrease.”

RUSSIA, BELARUS OUT

The WCF also decided at its annual congress that Russia and Belarus will be withdrawn from the competition for the rest of 2022, which means that Russia will not participate in next month’s European Championships in Östersund, Sweden.

Russia’s women will be replaced by Hungary and the men by Spain.

The WCF has adopted a rule stating that “The WCF Board may remove a team or member federation from a WCF event if, in the sole opinion of the Board, their presence at the event would harm the event or endanger the safety of the participants or the good would affect the order of the endangered event.”

Russia, backed by neighboring Belarus, invaded Ukraine in February.

The WCF quickly booted out 2021 runners-up Russia from the Women’s World Cup in Prince George the following month, as well as the Men’s World Cup in Vegas.

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on October 20, 2022.