Scotties Tournament of Hearts Le Tournoi des Cœurs Scotties |
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Established | 1961 |
2018 host city | Penticton, British Columbia |
2018 arena | South Okanagan Events Centre |
2017 champion | Ontario (Rachel Homan) |
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2017 Scotties Tournament of Hearts |
The Scotties Tournament of Hearts (French: Le Tournoi des Cœurs Scotties) is an annual Canadian women's curling championship, sanctioned by the Canadian Curling Association. The winner goes on to represent Canada at the women's world curling championships. Since 1985, the winner also gets to return to the following year's tournament as "Team Canada". It is formally known as the Canadian Women's Curling Championship.
Since 1982, the tournament has been sponsored by Kruger Products, which was formerly known as Scott Paper Limited when it was a Canadian subsidiary of Scott Paper Company. As such, the tournament was formerly known as the Scott Tournament of Hearts; when Kimberly-Clark merged with Scott, the Canadian arm was sold to the Quebec-based Kruger Inc.—while Kruger was granted a license to use several Scott brands in Canada until June 2007, it was given a long-term license to the Scotties brand because Kimberly-Clark already owned Kleenex. As such, the tournament was officially renamed the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in 2007.
The format is a round robin of 12 teams. As of the 2015 Scotties Tournament of Hearts there have been more than 12 eligible teams; therefore a pre-qualification tournament is now held each year to trim the field to twelve. At the end of the round-robin, playoffs occur to determine the championship winner. The system used is known as the page playoff system.
Beginning with the 2018 tournament, the event will expand to a sixteen team field, with the ten provinces, three territories, Northern Ontario, and Team Canada being joined by the highest-ranked non-qualified team on the Canadian Team Ranking System standings. The teams will be separated into two pools of eight, each playing a round-robin, with the top four teams in each pool advancing to a second pool to determine the final four teams. The pools are possibly tentatively slated to be determined by the CTRS standings as of December 31, 2017.