By Adam Laskaris
More than anything, Brendan Bottcher is itching to get the next curling season going.
“It feels like we've spent a lot of time talking, and it feels like it's time to get down to the business of curling,” Bottcher said in an interview with GSOC.
Forming a new team out of Edmonton featuring brothers Jacob and Tanner Horgan, and former Team Gushue teammate Geoff Walker, Bottcher’s back at the skip position full-time for the first time since 2024.
At his peak at skip, Bottcher found himself winning five Grand Slams, in four Brier finals (winning one in 2021), and ranking as high as second in the world. And while it’s anyone’s best guess how his new rink will perform, internal expectations are sky-high.
“I'm certainly hopeful we've got some magic on this team that's going to come together,” Bottcher added.
The ups and downs of team formation
Few people know the ups and downs of team changes quite like Bottcher, who has been a part of three distinct squads and some high-profile team changes in just the last five years.
His 2021 Brier-winning side parted ways with third Darren Moulding midway through their final season together after the Canadian Olympic Trials, before eventually completely splitting up at the end of the 2022 quadrennial.
Bottcher’s new rink of Ben Hebert, Marc Kennedy, and Brett Gallant opted to move on without him in 2024 after two seasons together, eventually linking up with Brad Jacobs en route to a Brier win and an Olympic gold medal.
After initially announcing a step back from the men’s game in 2024 to focus on mixed doubles and coaching Team Homan, Bottcher found himself offered the second position with Team Gushue, following their own split with E.J. Harnden.
On their day, the final iteration of Team Gushue could still beat just about anyone, picking up wins over five of the top 10 teams in the world per doubletakeout.com this past season. An 8-0 round robin at a home Brier in St. John’s had fans believing that maybe Canadian title No. 7 for the rink was in order.
Squint, and they looked like one of the best teams on the planet.
But on the whole, the results weren’t quite as expected, as Team Gushue made the 2024 CO-OP Canadian Open final but did not find themselves in the championship game at any other marquee event.
Bottcher doesn’t necessarily look at his time on The Rock solely as just the wins and losses, though.
“I spent some time reflecting, and I really appreciated the time I spent with Brad,” Bottcher said. “I think I picked up a handful of really valuable skills. For me, it was a learning curve, for sure, playing a different position. I think I've got a lot more perspective than I maybe had in the past when I was only a skip.”
And after just under two years playing a new position for a rink based out of Newfoundland and Labrador, Bottcher found himself looking for a way to skip out of his home province again.
“[Gushue] was open with us early, announcing all the way back in September that it was going to be his final season,” Bottcher shared. “It really opened up the rest of us to start having conversations and to start even thinking, 'What do we want to go do?'"
Learning from the best
Alongside playing with Gushue, Bottcher also mentioned the ability to play mixed doubles alongside Rachel Homan — the pair finished second at the 2025 Olympic Trials — as a major learning experience.
“It was pretty cool to go and do those things, pretty cool to go and learn from some of the game's best curlers ever, just learning how they view certain things, what's important to them, how they practice, some of the nuances and kind of the minutia of what makes them great,” Bottcher said. “Those were opportunities I never would have dreamt I would have had, in all honesty.”
When watching Canada’s teams at Milano Cortina 2026, Bottcher had a unique perspective, having played with three of the four members of Team Jacobs recently, as well as with Homan.
“Ultimately, we battle against each other week in, week out. There's a lot of competition between all of us, every week we're fighting against each other, year after year, we're fighting against each other," Bottcher said. “The Olympics is kind of the one time where we can all come together and just cheer for Canada together. It was good to see the guys on the podium, it was great to see Rachel on the podium, and I'm hoping in the next Olympics we can get three teams on the podium.”
Who to play with?
When looking ahead to form his new roster, Gushue’s longtime lead Walker seemed like the most natural fit to take along as a teammate, with both already residing in Alberta.
“[Geoff and I] were likely forming a team back in Alberta again. So it was figuring who's at that level, who's passionate to put the work in, who's willing to make the moves to make it all happen? And the Horgan brothers just were top of the list in so many of those categories,” Bottcher added.
Coming off two years with Team Epping out of Northern Ontario, the Horgans had gone through many battles against Bottcher and Walker over the years.
“They've been tough to play against. They're big, strong boys on the brush. They make a pile of shots from the hack … they both have skipped in the past. It never hurts to have a couple opinions or a couple sober second thoughts on some strategy out there,” Bottcher said.
“I think now getting back to skip, there will be a few things I learned along the way that will definitely get me a couple steps ahead of where I was a couple years ago, even though that whole process was tumultuous, to say the least, for a couple of years.”
A building year
Competing at the Winter Olympics in France in 2030 remains the ultimate goal for the team, though Bottcher doesn’t necessarily see that as a stopping point.
“It’s certainly a plan for four years, if not beyond. That's part of the benefit of playing with a couple of younger guys is they've got a long runway in front of them,” Bottcher said in reference to the 26- and 28-year-old Jacob and Tanner Horgan.
Bottcher earmarked something he hasn’t done since 2023 — play in a provincial playdown — as one of the first challenges for his new team, with the goal of representing Alberta at the 100th Brier next March in Saskatoon. He called season one a “building” year with the team, aiming to emphasize process over results.
“I think it's a year where if you can put a lot of energy into how you practice and how you train, and you can build really good systems together, that will pay some dividends a few years from now. So I'm hoping we can put that work in, and maybe have less focus on event-to-event,” Bottcher said.
For now, though, it’s all about establishing the right habits — throwing the rock consistently, learning each other’s tendencies, and establishing communication methods so that the plans can come together on the ice.
“I do think we’ve got to chase down some European teams just in terms of how they go about training and practicing,” Bottcher said. “Certainly, we're all committed to spending that time together … that time in a practice environment is probably the most important thing for us. I think if we can put the work in, and we can just stay focused and grounded, I think we can have a pile of success with this team.”
