The 2024 Scotties Tournament of Hearts will have a sprinkling of Sudbury talent - but there will be none at the Montana's Brier a few weeks later in Regina.

Such is the landscape after the provincial playdowns were contested in Little Current last week - with Sudbury also playing a key role in the Ontario Scotties as well.

The Krista McCarville Thunder Bay based rink that includes Kendra Lilly at lead (along with Andrea Kelly - vice; Ashley Sippala - second; Sarah Potts - alternate) capped off a flawless week of curling with a 6-4 win over the Krysta Burns Northern Credit Union Community Centre foursome Sunday morning.

Team McCarville posted a 5-0 round robin record, which included a 7-6 win over Burns. For her part, the runner-up who was joined this year by Jestyn Murphy, Sara Guy and Laura Masters went 4-1 in earning a spot directly in the final, with no tie-breakers required.

Meanwhile, long-time NCUCC member Kira Brunton and her team of Danielle Inglis (skip), Calissa Daly (second) and Cassandra de Groot (lead) earned the double life in Dorchester, winning three straight to enter the playoff round as the top seeded team in a Page format event.

An 8-3 loss to Carly Howard forced Team Inglis to get past Chelsea Brandwood (10-4) before earning some revenge with an 8-7 win over Howard in the championship encounter.

Brunton was not the only Sudbury connection in this field which also featured Lauren Rajala (Team Artichuk) and Megan Smith (Team Brandwood), with Jamie Smith serving as alternate for Rajala/Artichuk and company.

Meanwhile, back in Little Current, the Tanner Horgan rink (Jacob Horgan, Ian McMillan, Scott Chadwick) would have dearly loved to have a second life in the playoffs in the triple knockout affair.

Like Team Inglis, the Horgan NCUCC foursome also navigated the A draw quite comfortably, beating Brad Minogue (8-4), Brian Adams Jr (6-2) and Trevor Bonot (10-4) to earn a berth directly in the Sunday afternoon final.

There, they would renew acquaintances with Team Bonot, who used an 8-5 win over Adams Jr to take the B qualifying spot and then bounced a surging Zack Warkentin crew 9-2 in the semi-finals.

Bonot got the jump quickly in the rematch, stealing three in the second end, with Horgan getting two back in the third. After Bonot scored with the hammer in the fourth, Horgan ran off a 1-1-1 run to grab a 5-4 lead heading to the eighth end.

With hammer on their side, Team Bonot regained the lead by scoring a deuce in eight and then sealed the win with a steal of one in the tenth as the Thunder Bay native who has competed at eight nationals (five in Mixed; three in Mixed Doubles) and one Mixed Worlds now gets his first shot at a Brier.

"We were pretty confident that we could be playing on Sunday," said Bonot, whose team of Mike McCarville (vice), Jordan Potts (second), Kurtis Byrd (lead) and coach Al Hackner lost in the NOCA semi-final one year ago.

"We worked a little bit harder this year," added Bonot. "The front end have been setting the tone for us, all year. We just had to stay with what we know how to do. We had to be doing the things that we know how to do well and basically, that's what we did."

Truth be told, the score of their initial battle with Horgan is more than a little deceiving, with Team Bonot trailing 5-4 but with hammer entering the eighth end on Friday night.

"We just had a really bad end," acknowledged Bonot, his team giving up a steal of three and two more in the ninth. "There wasn't one thing we had to be better at; we just had to play ten full ends."

Coming off a victory in the Thunder Bay Major League of Curling three days earlier, Team Bonot were more than a little excited heading to Manitoulin Island last week.

"We had a lot of confidence - the guys believed in each other," said Bonot. "We knew that if we went to Little Current and played like we could, that we would be playing on Sunday."

Now they will play in Regina from March 1st to the 10th, site of the Brier, with McCarville as the only team member who has previous experience at the event (well, along with coach Hackner, obviously).

The 2024 Scotties Tournament of Hearts is set for February 16th to the 24th in Calgary and will also feature Tracy Fleury and Rachel Homan, the back-end of the number one ranked women's team in the world, currently.