By Ben Hoppe
The season’s first Grand Slam of Curling event wound up with an unfortunate parallel for Danny Casper.
Last Friday evening at the Co-op Invitational in Victoria, the 25-year-old skip saw his playoff hopes evaporate as he watched Matt Dunstone and Brendan Bottcher play to a tie. He watched from the stands, powerless to change the outcome, as the Dunstone-Bottcher shootout ensured both teams moved into the playoffs and eliminated any tiebreaker possibilities for Casper.
It was not dissimilar to a scenario that played out eight months earlier in Italy. Casper had to look on as Canada lost to Norway in the final round-robin draw at the Winter Olympics. He needed a win from Brad Jacobs to see the medal rounds.
In both scenarios, Team Casper controlled their own destiny and failed to give themselves the final push in the standings while simultaneously getting no outside help from other games.
"It’s frustrating watching your fate be decided by somebody else, but I think it’s more frustrating putting yourself in that position," Casper shared over a phone call this week. "I was more upset with the fact that we did that to ourselves."
Both results created a painful lesson for the squad.
"We know we just need to play better and get wins earlier on," he said.
It’s important to remember this is a team that is fresh off not just their Olympic debut, but their men’s international championship debut.
Their highest levels of international play before Milano Cortina consisted of the Olympic Qualifying Event, the World University Games, and individual appearances at the World Junior Curling Championships. Suddenly, they had the brightest lights of the sporting world shining on them.
“As much as you want to pretend that you don’t notice all the cameras around and all the extra people, it’s hard not to,” Casper said.
The Olympic debutants left Italy with a better understanding of what “real” pressure feels like and how each member of the team responds to pressure. The experience provided them a valuable lesson in team dynamics and how they can support each other and communicate with each other in moments of stress. Team Casper has had no shortage of opportunities to put those experiences to the test already this season.
While Casper will enjoy any success his team has early on in the first season of the new quadrennial, his focus is not on winning events or making the playoffs at elite events. He has his eyes set on something bigger.
"Every team is in the way"
“We just want to be the best,” Casper said. “The goal should always be winning and should always be being the best. So we think about more of our process of how we’re going to get better as a team.”
His team's focus is less about accolades or finishes at various events. The short-term successes are merely byproducts of their big-picture goal: becoming the best team in the world.
Four years ago, Casper was the up-and-coming threat to a national roster headlined by John Shuster and Korey Dropkin. It was the “we always expect to win” attitude that helped Casper take a massive leap forward and win a memorable Olympic Trials best-of-three series against Shuster, where Casper was unafraid of the moment.
Now, however, they’re no longer the threat waiting in the wings. They’re the reigning U.S. Olympic team with Shuster and the up-and-coming junior team led by Caden Hebert in pursuit. But Casper isn't focused on Shuster or Hebert. He’s focused on his team.
“I don’t think of it as in four years, we need to beat Caden or need to beat John or whoever it may be,” said Casper. “We just think that we need to be a lot better than what we are now in four years."
The name or nations on the jerseys of Casper’s opponents do not matter. What matters is they’re an opponent, and Casper is determined to overcome any opponent.
"We want to be the best team in the world, and we don’t really think about what other teams are in the way," he said. "Because to be the best team in the world, every team is in the way."
Adjusting to changes
Casper credited the team’s ability to lean into their in-game communication and between-game team systems with their fast start to the 2026 season, winning their first event at the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard and finishing as semifinalists in their second event at the AMJ Shorty Jenkins Classic in Cornwall, Ont. The team dynamics helped them work together as they continued to implement technical changes made over the summer, aided by USA Curling’s new high performance director Brad Gushue.
“I don’t want to say we weren’t confident, but we were interested to see how a lot of our technical changes would kind of show in action,” Casper shared in an interview following their first two events.
Casper wasn’t thrilled with the state of his delivery as last season came to a close, so he went to work with Gushue during some national team training camps over the summer. Gushue has preached similar slides and deliveries across all U.S. teams, and Team Casper has been working hard to implement changes.
“Like a golf swing, it takes time to work those changes in to make them feel comfortable,” said Casper. “I don’t think they’ve felt comfortable in those first couple of events and don’t feel comfortable yet, but they feel good enough where we can still make shots.”
Gushue is not the only new national staff member helping the 2026 Olympians. As part of the new coaching structure implemented by Gushue, Chris Plys — Frontier Curling Club GM and former vice for Shuster — was named as one of the national team coaches. Plys and Casper, who have become good friends, were paired together for the coming season.
Casper was quick to credit the impact of coach Jordan Moulton while also noting the benefit of having a new perspective on the team, especially when that new perspective comes from a person they competed against regularly.
“We’ve spent some years battling," he said. "He can take that direct experience to us of what he felt as a competitor.”
As for whether or not having his good friend and Rock League GM also serve as his national coach would be a source of conflict, Casper joked that the only source of conflict would be too much time with Plys before adding sincerely.
“He’s one of the people who I don’t need any time away from," Casper said.
The other major change to the bench stems from the retirement of Rich Ruohonen, who was originally added to throw lead and call the game as Casper learned to work through his diagnosis with Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). That role was heavily reduced last season as Casper got a better feel for managing and playing with GBS.
The lack of games off does not mean Casper is out of the woods with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. He still feels the impacts on a day-to-day basis and shared that he has experienced a little bit of a plateau with the diagnosis.
“My doctors don’t really know how long that is going to last. (It) could be a forever thing,” he said.
“A lot of people kind of assumed I was out, that I was really, really sick and couldn’t play for however long it was, and then came back and we made it to the Olympics. You know, ‘Wow, what a story, what an ending.’ It’s not over at all.”
Casper credited his team and celebrated the fact that they fought through it together and got to the Winter Olympics, but the challenges are still there even if he’s not continuing to miss games. If anything, the challenges faced by the young skip since his diagnosis brought the team closer as they supported each other. They’re unafraid to have hard conversations, and it creates pathways to checking in with each other during tense times.
"We’re not changing anything"
The Co-op Invitational was one of those times.
During their Thursday game against Dunstone, Team Casper celebrated multiple shots, which helped hang crooked numbers on the scoreboard.
After Dunstone made two excellent shots for the win in the eighth end, he was heard on the broadcast saying, “That’s when you celebrate,” in an apparent nod to Casper’s earlier celebrations. It created a chippy moment in what could be a budding rivalry between the two teams.
Team Casper took some time to debrief with each other and ensure they were all on the same page following the exchange and the loss. They talked it through and agreed everyone on the team was good.
The discussion is even more helpful as they will be facing Dunstone again at the GSOC Masters in Medicine Hat, Alta. Considering the ending of the game in Victoria, will they change their approach?
“Not a chance. We’re not changing anything,” said Casper. “We’re looking at it as a great team that we need to play well against.”
After all, to be the best team in the world, every team is in the way. And on that Friday night in Medicine Hat, Dunstone is going to be in the way of Casper’s quest to be the best in the world.
Ben Hoppe covers the American curling scene in his newsletter Stones and Stripes.
