STEINBACH, Man. — There's a lot at stake this week at the Crown Royal Players' Championship.
With less than a month to go until the start of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, the Crown Royal Players' Championship serves as the final tune-up for teams heading to Milano Cortina.
It's also the fifth and final Grand Slam of Curling event of the season — and the big one in the series — with a combined $480,000 prize purse up for grabs. The Crown Royal Players' Championship is considered the toughest of the Grand Slams, featuring the top 12 men's and women's teams from the year-to-date rankings.
Before representing Great Britain at the Winter Olympics, skip Bruce Mouat has his eyes on the prize here this week.
"Absolutely, yeah, we obviously want to win another title," said Mouat, who is the event's defending champ and a winner of 12 Grand Slams. "We don't come to these events and use it as experience anymore. We want to actually come and compete and that's what we're doing this week.
"We've done really well so far in our first two games against two pretty tough opponents, and we've got three more games to go. I’m excited to see what we've got ahead of us, but the way that we're playing right now is very satisfying."
Switzerland's Yannick Schwaller is also focused on the present. The Swiss skip is aiming to win a second straight Grand Slam title after capturing the first of his career two weeks ago at the HearingLife Canadian Open in Saskatoon.
"We're just trying to do good here, honestly. We do not try to look ahead too much. Slams are also big. We want to do good here, and we want to continue the momentum that we had two weeks ago," Schwaller said.
"We enjoy ourselves right now. It's really fun to play curling with those guys. It's a cool group, and two awesome coaches. We just like to continue that and be in the moment."
Better late than never, the Crown Royal Players' Championship is the first Grand Slam major tournament of the season for Tabitha Peterson. Her American squad had a busy fall schedule, winning the U.S. Olympic Team Trials and punching a ticket to Cortina through the last-chance Olympic Qualification Event.
"We were so happy to get the invite, just in terms of the schedule. It was a good time to be playing before the Olympics and playing a lot of really good teams, really good matches, almost like a practice before the Olympics," Peterson said.
"But really, it's our first Slam of the season besides the Tier 2 back in London in September, so to be back out playing in the arena, with the crowd, we are so thrilled to be here."
It could also be the last Grand Slam event for several teams with lineup changes and retirements expected after the conclusion of the Olympic cycle.
E.J. Harnden, who throws second stones for Matt Dunstone, announced last week he will be stepping back from full-time curling at the end of the season. The 2014 Olympic gold medallist joined Team Dunstone midway through last season, reuniting with his brother Ryan Harnden on the front end. Harnden captured his 10th career Grand Slam title in September when they won the AMJ Masters, completing a career Grand Slam in the process as well.
"I feel very privileged and lucky to have played with him the last year and a half," Dunstone said. "One of the best seconds of all time and probably the best sweeper of all time, but not a whole lot of a debate. My out-turn is going to be in trouble moving forward here, but just want to have a lot of fun with him this week.
"We kind of talked earlier, treating this as another event. Yes, it's his last one, everybody knows that, but not making that the focus point. He doesn't want to make that the focus point. He wants to go out and compete with us, win, have as much fun as he and all of us can. We're not treating it, and he doesn't want us to treat it, kind of like a grand finale, right? He just wants to go out and compete, and that's what he is. He's a competitor, he's a sportsman, he's shown that his whole career, and would love to get this one for him."
SWEDISH SHOWDOWN IN STEINBACH
Isabella Wranå was humming “Stayin’ Alive” after defeating Anna Hasselborg 6-5 in a shootout, and it wasn’t because she was practising her pipes for the Grand Slam of Karaoke.
Wranå needed to get into the win column to have a chance of remaining in the mix at 0-1-0-2 (two points).
“Yeah, it feels amazing,” Wranå said. “We were very close in our earlier games, but we kind of missed in the wrong spots in those games, so it felt nice to be able to win the shootout today.”
The game also had massive implications outside of the series as Wranå and Hasselborg are locked in a points race to determine who will represent Sweden at the World Women’s Curling Championship.
While Hasselborg is Cortina-bound — as is Wranå for mixed doubles — whichever team has the most points among their best six events combined will head to the women’s worlds. Although Hasselborg captured gold at the European Curling Championships, that event is not included in her total, adding an extra layer of intrigue.
Wranå held a roughly 14-point advantage over Hasselborg heading into the Crown Royal Players’ Championship.
“Yeah, for sure, that's been our main focus this year,” said Wranå, who won her first Grand Slam title at the Players’ Championship in 2023. “We're still hoping that maybe this (win) could mean that we have some kind of playoff chance here, but you never know at the Players’. It depends on who goes like winless and all of that, but it was better than losing, at least.”
Wranå kept pace with Hasselborg through the first half of the game, with the teams trading singles and deuces to start. It was a missed opportunity for Hasselborg in the fifth end as she was looking to pick out Wranå’s shot rock to score a multiple, but only grazed it to surrender the go-ahead point.
There were more misses and broom slams to end the contest. Trailing 5-4 coming home, Hasselborg had an opportunity to draw for two and the win when Wranå misfired her last shot, taking out her own stone. However, Hasselborg’s shot came up short, requiring a shootout to solve things.
Wranå placed her shooter right on the pin, and Hasselborg was unable to match.
“We usually have pretty tight games, and we have played each other so many times,” Wranå said. “We know both teams are going to do a little bit of extra in every end to get the win. It's fun playing them. I enjoy it.”
WEDNESDAY'S HIGHLIGHTS
• For Team Mouat, it was wins-day Wednesday against two opponents they'll see again at the Winter Olympics.
Mouat doubled up on Sweden's Team Niklas Edin 8-4 in a matinee matchup, and capped the double-header day with a 7-6 shootout victory over Team Daniel Casper of the United States in the evening.
"Yeah, it was nice," Mouat said after the win over Edin. "We know this is an important couple of months now. Playing against Olympic teams, you want to come out and play well. Really glad that we flipped the hammer after three ends and a really good team shot in the fourth for the two.
"We're just buzzing to be playing well at a really decent field and hoping to kind of continue that to the end of the week."
The fourth end proved to be the difference-maker as Mouat broke a 2-all tie with a nifty shot, redirecting off his own stone to roll in and remove Edin's buried shot rock to score two.
"We wanted to keep control. We knew that it was a thick half to make the perfect shot, and it was actually tough to go over the face of it," Mouat said. "We kind of committed to it and if we ended up just rolling into it, we still got the one.
"It was a really good team shot. The boys swept it perfectly. Grant (Hardie) called the line perfect. Really nice to use your own stone as a ricochet instead of one of theirs, but it worked out for us."
Edin missed an angle raise attempt in five to give up a steal and fall behind 5-2, but a rare mistake from Mouat rolling deep allowed the reigning Olympic gold medallist to make a raise bump for two and close within one.
The gloves came off early, though, as Mouat iced the game with a long runback in the seventh to count three more points.
Mouat moved up to a 2-1-0-0 record (eight points) with the comeback victory over Casper after scoring the tying two points in the eighth end and biting the button in the shootout.
• There was a bit of a sweeping controversy between Canada's Team Rachel Homan and Japan's Team Satsuki Fujisawa.
Homan warned Team Fujisawa, "You can't do that," as they were sweeping beside the rock during the fifth end.
Whether or not Team Fujisawa was in the wrong, there will no doubt be more discussions about sweeping in the near future to clarify what is or isn't allowed.
• That's a five count! Kyle Waddell capitalized after a miss from Dunstone to score five points in the fourth end en route to his Scottish squad's 9-4 victory.
• Team Peterson came from behind for another victory, this time rallying with single steals in the seventh and eighth ends to edge Wranå 5-4 in the noon draw.
"It feels great, of course. I feel like even in this game, even though we were down two points, we were still making a ton of shots, but so were they," said Peterson, who improved to a 1-1-0-0 record (five points). "We didn't feel like, oh no, so we knew that if we kind of just keep the pressure on them, maybe they won't make as many of those good runbacks.
"It worked out for us in the last two ends. They kind of missed some of those runbacks."
• You can’t fool Joël Retornaz twice. After Waddell pulled off a tough double to score the tying two points with his last shot Tuesday, leading to a shootout victory, Retornaz ensured a similar scenario wouldn’t play out again.
His Italian club was up by two points without the hammer coming home once more against Canada's Team Brad Jacobs on Wednesday morning.
Although Retornaz locked onto the stone at the back, that didn’t stop Jacobs from attempting a double anyway. Jacobs redirected off the shot rock, but hitting the frozen stone also bounced his other rock out of the house.
Retornaz prevailed, winning 5-4, to improve to a 1-0-1-0 record (four points). Jacobs is now in the danger zone, dropping to a 0-0-0-2 record with zero points.
• In an Olympic preview, South Korea's Team Eun-ji Gim came out firing with a 12-4 win over Japan's Team Sayaka Yoshimura.
Gim (2-0-0-0, six points) wrapped up things early and put a bow on the match in the sixth end with a raise to bump out all of Yoshimura's stones and score four. Yoshimura fell to a 0-0-0-2 record (zero points).
It was the second straight game where Gim scored a dozen, as her team also ran up the scoreboard Tuesday with a 12-7 victory over Canada's Team Kerri Einarson.
ABOUT THE EVENT
The Crown Royal Players' Championship is the fifth and final Grand Slam of Curling event of the season, featuring 12 of the top men's teams and 12 of the top women's teams from around the world.
Both divisions are split into two pools of six for round-robin play. The top six teams overall advance to the playoffs, with the best two receiving byes to the semifinals. If necessary, one tiebreaker round will be played on Saturday.
If a game is tied after eight ends during the round-robin stage, a draw-to-the-button shootout will determine the winner. Teams receive three points for a regulation win, two points for a shootout win and one point for a shootout loss.
Extra ends will be played instead of shootouts during the tiebreakers and playoffs. The quarterfinals and semifinals are scheduled for Saturday, with both finals on tap Sunday.
