Alberta out at Brier as Koe rink suffers heartbreaking 9-8 loss to Ontario

Alberta, led by Kevin Koe, in action Friday against Ontario at the Tim Horton Brier in London, Ontario (Photo: Twitter@TSNCurling)

One Alberta rink is moving on and one Alberta curling icon is out at the Tim Horton's Brier after a pair of Friday contests.

Ontario's Mike McEwen defeated Alberta's Kevin Koe 9-8 while Brendan Bottcher's Wild Card #1 topped Northern Ontario's Tanner Horgan 8-5 in Friday's crossover elimination games at Budweiser Gardens in London, Ontario.

They advance to the four-team Page playoffs with seeding games scheduled for the evening.

Unbeaten Manitoba skip Matt Dunstone and Team Canada's Brad Gushue earned byes after leading their respective nine-team pools in round-robin play.

It was a new playoff format for this year's Brier, which meant that despite what your record was heading into this morning, if you lost, you were out.

Koe's Alberta rink cruised through the preliminary round this week, racking up a 7-1 record, but against Ontario, it came down to the final rock of the 10^th end.

Ontario, trailing 8-7, had the hammer and McEwen got past the guard to take out both Alberta rocks to count two and advance with a 9-8 win.

Dunstone will play Bottcher in one seeding game and Gushue, the defending champion, will face McEwen in the other. The winners advance to the 1-2 Page game on Saturday and the losers fall to the 3-4 game.

Game time is 5 p.m. MT.

The semifinal and final will be played Sunday. The winning team will represent Canada at the world men's curling championship in Ottawa that runs April 1 to 9 .

With files from the Canadian Press and Glenn Campbell