By John Hodge
The men’s final is set for the Montana's Canadian Curling Trials in Halifax, where Matt Dunstone will face Brad Jacobs for the right to represent Canada at the Winter Olympics in Italy early next year.
Dunstone reached the championship game after knocking off Mike McEwen in the semifinal on Thursday night by a score of 9-5. The game broke open in the sixth end after McEwen came heavy on a freeze, which allowed Dunstone to make a double takeout for three.
There was a surprisingly messy house in the 10th end, and McEwen momentarily looked poised for a big score, but Dunstone spoiled those chances with a perfect draw on his last rock.
Dunstone’s team was the field’s best at the midway point of the tournament at 4-0. Colton Lott and Ryan Harnden were the top positional performers at third and lead, respectively, and the squad had by far the best hammer efficiency of any team at 53 per cent.
That all changed in the second half of the round-robin as Dunstone’s unit collapsed, backing into the playoffs with three straight losses. The first defeat came in a squeaker to Kevin Koe, but the next two were relatively one-sided. The team was outcurled by nine per cent in a 6-2 loss to Jacobs, then Dunstone curled 67 per cent — the lowest single-game average by any skip this week — in a 9-5 loss to McEwen.
The team would not have even made the semifinal had Jacobs not beaten Brad Gushue on Wednesday night, which eliminated the two-time Olympic medallist from playoff contention.
Dunstone shook off the slump in the semifinal, throwing 93 per cent and outcurling McEwen head-to-head by nine per cent. Based out of the Granite Curling Club in Winnipeg, Dunstone’s team was rock-solid across the board, curling 93 per cent despite some tricky ice conditions.
“The curling gods gifted us one yesterday and gave us this opportunity,” Dunstone said after the semifinal. “I’m just really proud of the group. It’s been very heavy the last 24 hours."
“A lot of the emotions that you could have felt losing this game were out yesterday," he added. "It was very easy to play completely free (against McEwen) having already felt that. Just being provided a second chance, I want to show a lot of gratitude towards this opportunity because it would be very easy to argue that we shouldn’t have had it, shouldn’t have been here today and we happened to be, so I wanted to really appreciate the moment.”
Jacobs' rink from the Glencoe Club in Calgary finished the round robin at 6-1, clinching first place and a berth in the final before the last game of the round-robin even got underway.
The squad struggled out of the gate this week, suffering a 6-5 loss to Koe before narrowly surviving an extra-end 6-4 scare against Rylan Kleiter. The team got hot after that, however, rattling off five straight wins over McEwen, Jordon McDonald, John Epping, Dunstone, and Gushue. The victories over Epping and Gushue were nail-biters, but the rest were relatively one-sided.
This marks the second straight time Jacobs has earned a spot in the finals of the Olympic Trials. He lost 4-3 to Gushue in Saskatoon four years ago, but the 40-year-old native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., won the Olympic Trials in Winnipeg in 2013, which Dunstone watched as a fan.
“(In 2013, Jacobs and his team) made curling really cool, they were intense, they were fiery. I love that,” Dunstone said. “I was in the crowd watching every stone of that event, and watching them go on that run was the ‘pinch me’ moment that (made me say), ‘Yes, high school is fun, but I need to pursue curling.’”
Ryan and E.J. Hardnen, the current front-end for Dunstone, filled the same roles with Jacobs during his last trip to the Olympics. The three players won gold in Sochi together in 2014 but will be on opposite sides of this year’s Olympic Trials final.
As part of this event’s new format, the two finalists will engage in a best-of-three final scheduled for Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET, Saturday at 6 p.m. ET, and Sunday at 6 p.m. ET (if necessary).
Dunstone, 30, remains relatively young but is still in search of a career-defining win, something he’ll look to achieve over the next few days against the man he watched achieve an Olympic Trials win 12 years ago.
“It’s going to be tough (to beat Jacobs), they’re playing great,” Dunstone said. “We have to curl at a very high level, and we have to put a ton of pressure on them.”
