OTTAWA — It’s the most ballistic Brier field ever.

TD Place is lousy with purple hearts.

The purple, heart-shaped crest has always been one of the most treasured possessions a Canadian curler could own. But this year at the Tim Hortons Brier here, they’re everywhere. They’re a dime a dozen. Just about everybody here has a bunch of ‘em.

The crest, created by the Macdonald Tobacco Company that sponsored the Brier from 1927 to 1979, came from the logo on the can of Purple Heart Tobacco and has been worn over the heart on the sweaters or jackets of every curler at the Brier back to the very beginning.

Canada’s defending Olympic champion Brad Jacobs of Northern Ontario admits he slept with his first purple heart under his pillow when he won it. There aren’t enough pillows in the host hotel to put one per pillow.

Glenn Howard is here with his 16 purple hearts, including 10 as a skip and six as a third for his brother Hurry Hard Howard, a.k.a TSN commentator Russ.

“I think it’s the strongest field ever,” said the 53-year-old who goes back to the corn broom era.

“I’ve been to 15 prior and there have been a few amazing fields before but there’s never been one this deep. It’s a ‘Who’s Who’ of curling. I really do think this is the deepest and the best field ever.”

Brad Gushue is here in his 13th Brier.

“There’s probably eight or nine teams that could probably win this year. Most other years you are probably looking at three or four who could win and maybe five or six that could make the playoffs. I really think that’s doubled this year,” said the 2006 Olympic gold medal winner from Newfoundland.

“You have five former Brier winners and none of them are the top two seeds, with my team and Mike McEwen’s team from Manitoba being No. 1 and No. 2.

“Then you have Jim Cotter of B.C., who has lost both a Brier final and an Olympic Trials final. Steven Laycock from Saskatchewan and Adam Casey of P.E.I. have been doing well. Depending what happens in the relegation round, if Jamie Koe gets out of there, he’s been in the playoffs before. It’s amazing.

“I’m here at the Brier with the best team that I’ve had and the best we’ve played leading into a Brier and it’s also the best field we’ve ever played in.

“And, believe it or not, I was kind of cheering for all the top teams. When you only get a couple of them in, those games become so big in the round robin because if you lose them you don’t get a chance to make those up. In this type of field everybody is going to have some losses.

“A team with an 8-3 record has a realistic chance to be in first place in a field like this and if you go 9-2 I think you’re almost guaranteed to finish in first place.”

The numbers really are staggering.

Gushue’s Newfoundland teammate Mark Nichols is in his 12th Brier as is NWT second Brad Chorostkowski. Behind Alberta second Brent Laing in his 11th is NWT skip Jamie Koe his 10th.

Newfoundland leads the field with 34 purple hearts.

The two Alberta teams, Koe’s Alberta champions and the Pat Simmons/John Morris defending champion Team Canada, have a combined total of 62, with Koe’s crew leading the tournament with 32 and the skip only having five of them.

The Northwest Territories team that begins play in the relegation round from which one of four teams will emerge, has a combined 31 trips to the Brier.

Like Team Canada, Jean-Michel Menard’s Quebec “home team” from across the bridge in Gatineau, has 30. Northern Ontario’s Olympic champion Brad Jacobs’ Sault Ste Marie team has 29.

Ontario, despite the front end only having two, still has 26, with Howard’s collection involved.

Add ’em all up and you have the astounding total of 304 purple hearts on the ice for the opening ceremonies, even if three teams are headed home from this failed relegation experiment the next morning.

Repeat. Three hundred and four!

To really get a sense of how extra special this year’s Brier will be, add up the total games played by each individual player going into the Ottawa rock concert.

Ontario’s Howard, himself, has played 196.

Gushue goes in at 146 and his third, Mark Nichols, isn’t far back at 137. NWT second Chorostkowski has played in 120 Brier games and Quebec second Eric Sylvain in 108.

Team Canada’s Morris is at 103 and Simmons will play his 100th game on the opening draw. Jamie Koe of the NWT goes in to relegation round play (which don’t count) at 100.

When it comes to teams, Koe’s stacked Alberta squad is tops with 353, followed by Gushue’s crew from The Rock, which has played a combined 370 games and Team Canada’s back-to-back Alberta-based Brier champions with 337. Northern Ontario’s Olympic champion Jacobs team and Menard’s Quebec regulars both have 313 games of Brier experience going in. Add them all up and this Brier features a field with a mind-boggling combined total of 2,972 games of Brier experience. Add 11 games per player on 12 teams and that total will grow to 3,104 by the end of the round robin not including the relegation round games.

Only 11 players in the entire field go in with zero games experience in the great granite festival — Ontario second Adam Spencer, New Brunswick lead Jamie Brannen and Nova Scotia second Scott Saccary are three.

Plus there are two entire teams.

Nunavut, of course, has none of it. And they’ll be out before it begins.

And there’s … wait for it … Manitoba.

Mike McEwen, B.J. Neufeld, Matt Wosniak and Denni Neufeld are all getting their Brier baptisms.

McEwen is going to be a favourite. And Howard and the back-to-back Brier champions on Team Canada are going to be picked out of the playoffs by some.

“The fans in Ottawa won’t have to look at the schedule to pick a good draw to go watch — there will be two or three good games on every draw,” said Nolan Thiessen of Team Canada.

“Ridiculously stacked. It looks crazy. It looks crazy good. It’s going to be a grind to make the playoffs. It’s going to be a barn-burner,” said Alberta lead Ben Hebert.

Or the tweet from teammate John Morris:

“Well there sure ain’t gonna be any FREE bingo squares at this year’s Brier! #HolyHanna #BestFieldEver?”

Normally making Brier predictions isn’t that difficult. But this year it’s a test.

terry.jones@sunmedia.ca

Twitter.com/sunterryjones