With another spilt of games on Thursday, Team Harnden finds themselves barely clinging to life at the Northern Ontario Men's Curling Championships at the Soo Curlers Association.
After starting the day with a victory, the Harnden rink, which includes skip Al Harnden, vice-skip Eric Harnden, second E.J. Harnden and lead Rob Thomas, lost yet another heartbreaker in Thursday's evening draw.
In the afternoon draw, Harnden scored a big win over Thunder Bay's Jeff Currie 8-6 before dropping a 7-6 decision to Haileybury's Rob Gordon in the 10th end.
With the split, Harnden moves to 2-4 with two draws remaining on Friday in the nine-team playdown.
Harnden hits the ice on Friday at 9 a.m. against Atikokan's Bruce Melville before concluding the round robin at 2 p.m. against Kirkland Lake's Rob McKelvey.
With the top four teams advancing to the page playoff round, Harnden will need to win out on Friday and have results from the other games fall in their favour. Several scenarios remain that could force a tiebreaker situation between teams with four losses.
In order for tiebreaker games to occur, more than two teams will need to be tied for the final playoff spot. Also, Gordon must lose his final draw at 2 p.m. or Currie and/or Sudbury's Chris Johnson lose both their draws on Friday.
Gordon currently sits in fourth place at 4-3 while Harden is tied with McKelvey, Timmins' Dave MacInnes and Melville for fifth spot at 2-4. Currie and Johnson are tied for second place at 4-2.
In other games on Friday morning, Johnson meets Thunder Bay's Denis Malette, Currie faces MacInnes and McKelvey meets Sudbury's Tim Phillips. At 2 p.m., MacInnes meets Malette, Melville faces Johnson and Gordon meets Currie.
In other results on Thursday afternoon, Melville scored six points in the final three ends to beat McKelvey 10-3, Malette took the game's last three points to edge Phillips 6-4 and Johnson used a four-point first end and a five-point fourth to defeat Gordon 12-4.
In the evening draw, Currie stole one in the tenth end to clip Phillips 6-5, Johnson defeated MacInnes 5-3 and Malette beat McKelvey 5-3.
Playoff action will begin on Friday at 8:30 p.m. following the players banquet with either page playoff games or tiebreakers, if necessary.
Should tiebreaker games be necessary, the page playdowns will be moved to Saturday at 9 a.m. The semi-final is scheduled for Saturday at 2 p.m. and the final at 7:30 p.m.
*** STANDINGS:
After Thursday evening's seventh draw:
Malette 6-0 Currie 4-2 Johnson 4-2 Gordon 4-3 McKelvey 2-4 Harnden 2-4 MacInnes 2-4 Melville 2-4 Phillips 2-5