For the second straight year, Saskatchewan representative Team Dunstone was left to commiserate following a loss in the semifinal at the Tim Hortons Brier.
Brendan Bottcher and his Alberta rink scored two in the 10th end to edge Saskatchewan 6-5 in the penultimate tilt at the men’s Canadian curling championship and went on to double Wild Card 2 (Kevin Koe) 4-2 in the final.
“We’re feeling a whole lot of emotions,” said skip Dunstone, a 25-year-old Kamloops resident. “Brendan made a 25-foot angle runback to win the game. We played a perfect last end, went eight-for-eight.
“Disappointed in the final outcome, obviously, but proud of how we conducted ourselves as a unit.”
Newfoundland and Labrador (Brad Gushue) earned a 7-6 victory over Dunstone in the 2020 Brier semifinal in Kingston, a last-rock win that preceded triumph in the title tilt.
“We’re not totally satisfied,” said Dunstone, whose third-place finish is worth $40,000. “We are hungry. There are way more bigger things to come for this squad.”
Bottcher, runner-up at the Brier in 2018, 2019 and 2020, finally got over the hump in 2021.
“Awesome for Brendan and his team,” Dunstone said. “The resiliency they’ve shown to work for this exact moment, it’s awesome for them.
“All they're going to do is push our team even harder. That’s the beauty of what’s going on in Canadian curling right now. There are teams pushing us all to be better.”
