'Organized chaos' of Rock League strategy keeping curlers on their toes in early going

Brad Jacobs and Bruce Mouat had just finished up an epic Olympic gold-medal game rematch, but there was work left to do.

After Jacobs’ Shield Curling Club edged Mouat’s Northern United 5-4 thanks to a final-end deuce on Tuesday at Rock League, the Cortina combatants shuffled over to the sheet next door, where a critical women’s game between Shield’s Kerri Einarson and Northern’s Isabella Wranå was coming down to the wire.

Twelve curlers from both teams, plus their general managers, converged on Sheet C at Toronto’s Mattamy Athletic Centre. Mouat offered advice to Wranå. Jacobs stood back and let Einarson, whose thinking time was down under one minute, do her thing.

In the end, an impressive last rock from Wranå scored three and sent Northern to a 5-4 victory, and a 2-1 win overall in the match, thanks as well to their 9-6 mixed-doubles triumph.

Northern — a team made up of players from across Europe — then gathered and yelled “awooooo” in a nod to their team logo, a wolf.

It was Rock League as The Curling Group CEO Nic Sulsky intended — competitive as ever, but with a twist.

“It's kind of organized chaos out there as far as GM,” said Shield’s Carter Rycroft, “especially when you get down to the last end or so. There's lots of timeouts going on. You can't be everywhere at once. You're trying to watch everything. So that makes it a little bit tough.”

Designing this format we dreamed of players from different national teams, uniting, bonding. <br><br>Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would take 1 day ❤️<br><br>Also, 3 of the first 4 <a href="https://twitter.com/rockleaguecurl?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@rockleaguecurl</a> matches came down to last rock.<br><br>The baby is starting to walk. <a