Northern Ontario caps two-win day with clutch victory at 2025 Montana’s Brier

You wouldn’t call the two wins from Northern Ontario’s Team John Epping on Monday works of art, but what they lacked at times aesthetically, they more than made up with tenacity.

And that’s just fine with Epping, whose Sudbury crew — vice-skip Jacob Horgan, second Tanner Horgan, lead Ian McMillan and coach Mike Harris — completed a perfect Monday at the 2025 Montana’s Brier, presented by AGI, with a come-from-behind 8-6 win over British Columbia’s Team Cameron de Jong (0-5; Victoria).

“This is our character,” said Epping, who began the day with a hard-fought 8-7 win over previously unbeaten Manitoba’s Team Matt Dunstone, making two runback takeouts in the 10th end to score a winning deuce. “We grind together, and we stick by each other, and work hard. We’re scrappy, and we don’t expect anything to be easy at the Brier. It’s going to be an emotional roller coaster, and you need a couple of breaks along the way.”

After the scrappy win over the Manitobans, Northern Ontario may have been hoping for an easier time of it against the winless host team, but the B.C. crew has been better than the record indicates and proved it again against Northern Ontario.

B.C. would jump into an early lead with a deuce in the second end, and then a steal of one in the third when Epping had to make an angle-raise takeout just to cut the Lotuslanders down to a single.

The teams would swap singles, lifting B.C. to a 4-2 lead at the interval.

In the sixth, Epping drew for a game-tying deuce, and after forcing B.C. to one in the seventh, Northern Ontario turned up the heat in the eighth against the mostly rookie team. It resulted in Epping making a precise angle tap to score a game-changing three and propel his team to a 7-5 lead.

“We weren’t as sharp the first half, but I thought we played actually one of our best second halves in a long time,” said Epping, who would end the game with an open hit to score a single in the 10th. “We talked about it before the game to make sure that we had to get ourselves back up for that one tonight (after the morning victory). And we knew that (B.C.) would play well. They’ve had a ton of close games, and the crowd was on their side, and that gets them pretty jacked up. So we knew we had to be sharp tonight. Like I said, we played a great second half, and I’m really happy to see the guys bounce back like that.

The win lifted Northern Ontario’s record to 4-1, tied for second place in Pool A with Manitoba’s Team Reid Carruthers (Winnipeg), behind Team Canada, skipped by Brad Gushue (4-0; St. John’s, N.L.)

There’s still plenty of work to be done to get Northern Ontario into position to make a run at the Montana’s Brier podium this weekend, but there are other goals on the to-do list this week, as many are aware. A solid showing in Kelowna will certainly put Team Epping in very good position to nail down a berth into the 2025 Montana’s Canadian Curling Trials in November in Halifax.

“Yeah, we’ve been watching, following, counting (Canadian Team Ranking System points); that’s Tanner’s job,” said Epping with a chuckle. “He looks after the figuring out of the points and where we are and what needs to happen. We’re in a good shape. We’ll be even better if we win this week.”

In other games Monday night, Team Canada rolled to a 7-3 win over Team Manitoba-Carruthers; Alberta’s Team Kevin Koe (2-3; Calgary) was a 10-2 winner over Nunavut’s Team Shane Latimer (0-4; Iqaluit); and New Brunswick’s Team James Grattan (2-2; Oromocto) stole the winning point in an extra end, defeating Newfoundland and Labrador’s Team Ty Dilello (1-3; St. John’s) 5-4.

Team Manitoba-Dunstone (3-1; Winnipeg) had the Pool A bye on Monday night.

The Montana’s Brier continues Tuesday with draws at 8:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. (all times Pacific).

Live scoring, standings and statistics for the 2025 Montana’s Brier are available at www.curling.ca/scoreboard/.

TSN and RDS2 will provide complete coverage of the 2025 Montana’s Brier. CLICK HERE for the complete schedule.

For ticket information for the 2025 Montana’s Brier, go to www.curling.ca/2025brier/tickets/

This story will be available in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/2025brier/nouvelles/?lang=fr