On Broomgate: A Broom Bag, If You Will

Answering your questions about the pod...

A July newsletter about curling. They said it couldn’t be done. It’ll be a short one, but I asked you for some questions you might have left about Broomgate, and you responded. I’ll get to those in a second, but first, a massive thank you to everyone who listened to the pod, shared it with friends, and reached out to me with kind words about it. The response has been truly overwhelming (#1 pod in Canada? Making Apple and New York Magazine’s Best Podcasts of the Year lists? Come on!) and I have no doubt that so many of you helped me along the way, and for that, I will be eternally grateful. Let’s get to your questions, which I have to say fascinated me. I was expecting a little bit more asking about the pod itself, but a lot of you were curious about what I might know about where sweeping is headed. I don’t know how much I exactly know, but let’s try!

I do think they will “nerf” the brooms further, yes. I touched on this a little bit in a previous newsletter, but talking to a lot of the top players that we did for the pod, one question we asked them was “could we see another Broomgate?” Most players agreed that there’s more rules in place now and it’s unlikely we’d see another sort of “scandal” where the players had to fight and the rules were unclear for an extended period of time, but most acknowledged they’d like the brooms to get a little less good. Brad Gushue was probably the biggest proponent of this, as he said he prefers the game to be a split of about 80/20, where a made shot is 80% the throw, 20% the sweep, and he thinks right now it’s closer to 50/50. No one else went that far, but a lot of players threw out numbers like 60/40, 70/30, and a lot had the sentiment the sweeping is too much now. Brad also specifically noted he would like the fabric to be changed again for this exact reason. No one else mentioned that, but when you have at least one top player thinking it, you probably have several.

I also know that sweeping techniques are being paid attention to a lot right now. There are a lot of top players that don’t like the knifing/carving that’s happening, and I also know there’s a lot of top players who don’t like where the leniency has gotten to with dumping on rocks. There has long, long been an appetite in the sport to keep the officials out of it, but I have heard more and more that players would be more accepting of officials being involved if it means things looking a little different than they do now.

And as for the blanks question, I’ve gone over that pretty extensively in the past, covering one thing I think is a potential solution in the half-point, and some other potential options.

While I did talk to broom manufacturers for this podcast, as you might imagine, they are often loathe to discuss trade secrets. For example, we visited BalancePlus’ HQ in Barrie, Ontario, and they wouldn’t let us see their warehouse because they were working on some stuff in there and didn’t want us to see it. Is that on handles? I have no idea. But it’s certainly possible.

One thing that has happened this past year that I’m not sure has been talked about a ton is that some of the bigger/stronger players on tour have switched to a thicker handle. The tapered handles that a lot of players use are lighter and offer a bit better grip and head speed, but some of the top players are getting so strong now that they are snapping them with some frequency. I know Amos Mosaner and Ben Hebert are two players for sure who have either fully gone back to a non-tapered, more rigid broom handle, or at least experimented with it. I would imagine this not only offers less risk of a broom snap, but might offer a little bit more power distribution too, similar to the flex in a hockey stick. Zdeno Chara famously used a stick flex that was not even measurable, with Shea Weber following not too far behind. The stiffer the flex, the more power you need to generate the result you’re looking for out of the stick, but if you can do it, the resulting power is much harder than a stick with a lighter flex. If you followed the careers of Chara and Weber, they were two of the hardest shooters in the entire NHL, being the only two winners of the All-Star Hardest Shot Contest for a decade. I’d imagine the broom functions the same way. If you’re strong enough to use it, a thicker shaft probably offers just a little bit more friction/power distribution on the head itself.

So all of this is to say, while shafts may not be officially being worked on, there is a potential upgrade available if you can handle it (no pun intended).

I think this mostly gets answered in my first response to Mac, but I do think they are looking at it, yes. We know there is another Sweeping Summit happening, we know that they tested foam density this offseason and have already made recommendations to broom companies/teams after that, and we know some players are unhappy. I think one thing Broomgate absolutely taught us is that equipment testing/regulations are never “done”. Manufacturers are always going to respond to feedback from players, and players are always going to want to push the limits of what equipment can do within the rules. With Broomgate, we learned the rules were FAR too lax, but now that they’re tighter, I think we’ll see them get more restrictive as time goes on and as necessary. Golf is a great example of this, as they continue to experiment with balls, drivers, and whatever else to keep the game enjoyable to watch and to keep the pros on a level playing field. I think curling will move along a similar path now and into the future.

I think part of the reason we talked about this in Episode 6 is because the answer is most likely no. Never say never, but there are reasons why full interviews (or parts of other ones) were left on the cutting room floor. I’ve had some similar questions in texts and DMs about the joke I made in E6 about there being a version of this podcast for curlers that would be much deeper into the curling weeds and 10 episodes long. My favourite of those was Team Grandy (now Team MacMillan) second Lindsay Dubue asking if we would ever see “Broomgate: Curler’s Version”. While I’d like to imagine I have the same pull as Taylor Swift does, the fact is I do not and the interview tapes are out of my control. But like I said, you really never know, and if there becomes a really good reason to do some extra episodes of this podcast or for some of these interviews to see the light of day, I hope that happens and we get to tell more of this story. Fingers crossed!

Alright, last one. We touch on this in the podcast, but no, I do not think that about Mike’s 2014/15 season, and I think that was also reflected in most of the responses from the curlers we talked to. Mike’s team was already one of the best in the world at the time, and really all that having those brooms did was make them slightly better. A small edge in curling among the top teams can make a big difference, but it wasn’t their fault and they were already going to be one of, if not THE, best teams anyway. As Mike outlines in the podcast, they never did any carving with the brooms, they always swept with two sweepers, etc. Did they make a few more shots because they could hold rocks better than other brooms? Maybe. But to say their entire success was because of the brooms would be completely false. Especially because of what we learned at the Sweeping Summit: all the brooms were too good. EQs were too good. Norways were too good. Even hair was too good! Etc. When sweeping with two sweepers going in opposite directions at the same time in that era, Hardline brooms maybe gave you a slight advantage over other brooms, but it wasn’t pronounced enough to say it was the sole or even major reason for anyone’s success. As we jokingly touched on in the show, my team was using Hardlines a full season before Mike, when almost no other team on tour was using them, and we topped out at 25th in the world, which is also about where we were for a few years after the Summit. If the brooms were THAT good and THAT much better than everyone else’s, we would’ve been in the top 10 or top 5 in those years leading up to the scandal.

There were also some claims in one of the pod interviews made about Mike’s team doing nefarious things with the brooms that year, but I played Mike that season and never saw it, and I don’t think a lot of other teams did either. And to answer your question about the insert, that was there the entire time, it did not get added in the 2015-16 season, which is why it didn’t get addressed on the pod. The insert was simply a part of the icePad head, and was from the beginning. Another thing we didn’t address in the pod but also came up around that time period was that Mike and his team were working with Hardline and using a broom fabric/head that was not available on store shelves. That was also debunked by just about everyone we talked to, so its inclusion wasn’t really necessary. Mike and Reid and us and anyone else using Hardline at that time were using the same icePads that were available off the shelf to everyone else.

There you have it! I hope you’re having a wonderful summer so far, and I’m very much looking forward to the next curling season with these big team changes, the new GSOC ownership, and more. I may see you once more before the season gets going, thank you as always for subscribing, I love you all and couldn’t do it without you.