McCarville rink cruises past Carey behind steal of 3 in opening draw of Scotties

A steal of three in the fourth end put Krista McCarville in the driver's seat but her Northern Ontario rink knew it couldn't take its foot off the gas during a 7-3 win over Chelsea Carey in Friday night's opening draw of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Thunder Bay, Ont.

"I think we get even a little bit more nervous just because there's so many ends left in the game," said third Kendra Lilly. "It was huge and it helped a lot, but we by no means thought the game was in the bag at that point.

"If anything, we wanted to bear down even more to make sure we didn't lose that lead."

The 18-rink competition to crown the Canadian women's curling champion is being held at the Fort Williams Gardens. Due to COVID-19 concerns the event is being held in an empty arena so there were no fans or media in the building to watch McCraville's home-town rink win its first game.

"It's different," said McCarville, who did hear some applause from volunteers. "It's super disappointing. We want the cheers out there.

In other games, a positive COVID test forced Tracy Fleury into isolation. That resulted in third Selena Njegovan taking over skip duties for the Wild Card 1 rink from Manitoba in its game against Andrea Crawford of New Brunswick.

Fleury came up short on a draw with her final rock to give Crawford a 6-5 win.

With Fleury as skip, her sister-in-law Robyn Njegovan, who was the alternate, moved to third. Second Liz Fyfe and lead Kristin MacCuish played their normal positions.

"It was unexpected," Fleury said about the change. "I play with Liz and Kristin and see their releases all the time.

"It was a little different having Robyn in the lineup but we have had some practices at home and we did some practising today, so it wasn't bad."

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