Bob Smallwood’s Yukon rink refused to go quietly.

The 41-year-old skip and his resilient Whitehorse curling team took Prince Edward Island all the way to an extra end Saturday afternoon, before losing 7-6 and being eliminated from the 2015 Tim Hortons Brier.

Smallwood’s last-rock freeze attempt in the 11th end just overcurled, leaving Adam Casey’s P.E.I. team with shot rock – and the win.

Casey, who at 25 is the youngest skip in the Brier, celebrated the victory without having to throw his last stone.

The two teams were playing the final of the pre-qualifying tournament to determine the last entry into the Brier, being held this week at the Saddledome in Calgary.

“It’s a big relief to graduate from the pre-qualifying and move on to the big roller-coaster I guess,” Casey told reporters post-game. “Now we have a pretty quick turnaround, have to get over the high that might be right now and get ready for Ontario tonight.”

Smallwood, along with lead Clint Ireland, second Scott Odian and third Wade Scoffin, got off to a good start, with the steel-nerved skipper threading the needle between two P.E.I. stones to score a single in the first.

Then a miss by Casey in the second allowed the Yukon to steal and go up 2-0.

But a Smallwood flash on a double takeout in the third end left things wide open for Casey to score three. P.E.I. would add singles in the fourth and fifth ends and would never trail again.

With things seeming to slip away, the Yukon would score two in the sixth, one in the ninth and another in the 10th to force extras.

With Prime Minister Stephen Harper looking on in the 11th, Smallwood’s final attempt to freeze to P.E.I.’s shot stone on the back edge of the button slightly overcurled to give Casey the win.

The victory saw the Islanders move into the main draw, where they have carved out an early 2-1 record after beating Team Canada and British Columbia.

Having the Yukon in the spotlight on national television Saturday was special, Scoffin told the Star today.

“I don’t think it really got away,” he said of the matchup. “We wanted to win. We came in and we had the right attitude and we performed very, very well. ... We know we belong.

“Sure, there was one or two shots that everybody saw on television that could have really changed the momentum of the game, but I tell you, coming back and getting into the extra end – we’re really pleased with all that.”

On Friday, P.E.I. beat Nova Scotia 11-3 in the final round robin game of the pre-qualification tournament.

That left each of the three rinks with 1-1 records, and forced Curling Canada to resort to draw to the button results to determine the top two teams.

P.E.I. earned the top cumulative score of 97.9 centimetres, while the Yukon group scored 118.3 to top Nova Scotia by just two cm.

The freshly-rebranded Curling Canada altered the format of both the men’s and women’s national championships to allow each province and territory the opportunity to enter a team.

Scoffin said the new format is “a step forward” from the shared territories berth that formerly saw the Yukon battle the Northwest Territories for a berth in the Brier, but not the solution.

Meanwhile, Nova Scotia skip Glen MacLeod did not show any resentment towards the new format, or the fact that for the first time in Brier history, his province would not be represented.

“We had already settled into the fact that this was the play-in format and not a big deal to us,” he told reporters. “We were the curling champions, not the policy-advocate champions of Nova Scotia.”

With files by the Canadian Press