Taylor Shire: Mike McEwen has found a fit in Saskatchewan through Brier experience

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Mike McEwen isn’t going anywhere just yet — figuratively anyway.

While the Winnipeg product has returned home after a second-place finish at the 2024 Montana’s Brier in Regina as the skip of Team Saskatchewan, it appears his team — featuring third Colton Flasch, second Kevin Marsh and lead Daniel Marsh — is going to stick together after a strong first season.

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“We have everything to be proud of, what we did in six months,” McEwen told reporters just minutes after losing to Canada’s Brad Gushue in Sunday’s final at the Canadian men’s curling championship.

“This is a great team and we’re not done yet.”

After curling out of his home province of Manitoba for more than 20 years, McEwen skipped an Ontario-based team at last year’s Brier in London, Ont.

The team made the playoffs but lost in the Page 3-4 playoff game to Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher before parting ways.

Looking for a new team and hoping to find a spark elsewhere, McEwen joined forces with Flasch and the Marsh twins out of Saskatoon’s Nutana Curling Club, where he would go on to win his third straight provincial title with three different provinces.

Team Saskatchewan put together a 7-1 round robin record to lead Pool B at the Brier, before losing to Bottcher in the Page 1-2 qualifier. McEwen and company then rattled of three straight wins — including a victory over Bottcher in the semifinal — before losing to Gushue in the final.

Despite being so close to his first Brier title, it appears this year has reinvigorated the 43-year-old McEwen’s love for the sport and belief in himself.

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“I started to get it back at the London Brier (in 2023),” said McEwen, who was named the first-team all-star skip this year. “And then this team, this group of guys, has really allowed me to get all the way back.

“They believed fully in me before I even was all the way back to believing in myself.”

And when he believes in himself, we’ve seen what McEwen can be capable of.

For several years curling out of Manitoba, McEwen skipped one of Canada’s best teams, as his squad of 11 years — featuring B.J. Neufeld, Matt Wozniak and Denni Neufeld — won six Grand Slam events together before qualifying for their first Brier in 2016.

Before their first Brier appearance, McEwen and company were second-place finishers in five of the six previous provincial finals. The other year they lost in the semifinal.

Since a fourth-place finish in 2016, McEwen hasn’t missed a Brier. Before this year’s silver medal, McEwen’s best finish came in 2017 when his team finished third in St. John’s, the same year he narrowly lost in the final game of the 2017 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials to Alberta’s Kevin Koe for the right to represent Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

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And while he’s been to nine Briers since his first in 2016, McEwen admitted last week in Regina that things weren’t always great with his confidence after that oh-so-close 2017 season.

“That’s the last time I played a big event — a Trials or a Brier-like situation — where I believed,” McEwen said on Saturday. “And so fast forward six years later, I played a whole bunch of Briers, but I didn’t have that.

“I went to a really dark place before that. I didn’t love the game as much as I should have and then started not working as hard as I should have.”

Alongside Flasch and the Marsh twins at the Brier, McEwen showed exactly what he is still capable of — while also being the uncontested crowd favourite inside the Brandt Centre.

And if he sticks in Saskatchewan for the next while, it’s not only good news for curling fans in this province, but for McEwen himself, who seems to have found a strong home away from home.

“That belief is back,” he said last week. “And that’s the biggest difference for me personally as the leader of this team.

“I’m definitely mindful of how fortunate I am to be in this position.”

tshire@postmedia.com

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