Draw 9 at the Brier

The Tim Horton's Brier is at Draw 9. I thought I would pick up the action from here and preview Draw 9.

Draw 9 has the following match-ups:

Manitoba vs Northern Ontario
Saskatchewan vs Quebec
P.E.I. vs NWT/Yukon
Nova Scotia vs Newfoundland

As a fan of the 'buffalo boys' I'm cheering for Burtnyk and Team Manitoba. At 4-1 they are in good shape to make the playoffs. There should be no problem defeating Northern Ontario and advancing to 5-1. This should be a good game for Burtnyk and his team to rebound from a sub par performance vs Ontario in Draw 7 yesterday.

Quebec blew their game against Brad Gushue and the boys from the Rock last night in Draw 8. A poor performance by the front end in the second half of the game cost Quebec and Menard, the 2006 Brier Champ, an important win. It dropped him to 1-4 and has almost all but eliminated his playoff hopes. Simmons and the Banjo pickers are rolling along only having lost to Alberta. A win for Quebec would help Manitoba but it's going to be tough for Menard to rally the troops.

P.E.I. won it's first game yesterday beating Nova Scotia. It was nice to see the veteran Peter Gallant get a W after being totally controlled by Kevin Martin and Alberta earlier in the day. NWT/Yukon started strong with a 3-0 lead over Newfoundland in Draw 7 but ended up losing 6-3. No big deal who wins this as both teams don't factor into the playoffs. If this was the world junior hockey championships you could call this the relegation game. There's a good chance the loser of this will end up last place.

Nova Scotia could find themselves near the bottom too. After starting with a win and taking Manitoba to an extra end they have gotten beat pretty badly. The Brian Rafuse team could play spoiler and knock off Gushue and Team Newfoundland. That would certainly help Team Manitoba but Gushue looks like he's not messing around here in Winnipeg. He slung his team on his back last night and took them to victory.

My picks

Manitoba
Saskatchewan
P.E.I.
Newfoundland