Matt Dunstone’s Canadian rink couldn’t recover from an early Scottish surge Saturday afternoon, as steals in the second and third ends helped propel Scotland to a win
Team Canada dropped to 2-1 on Saturday at the World Men’s Curling Championship in Ogden, Utah.
The Canadian team, which is skipped by Matt Dunstone and included Saultites E.J. Harnden at second and Ryan Harnden at lead along with third Colton Lott and coach Caleb Flaxey, dropped an 8-3 decision to Scotland’s Ross Whyte Saturday afternoon.
The loss came after the Dunstone rink opened the event on Friday with a pair of wins.
In Saturday’s loss, the Scottish team broke the game open early on, scoring a pair in the opening end with hammer before two single-point steals in the following two ends.
Dunstone cut the lead to 4-2 in the fourth, but Whyte immediately responded with three more of his own in the fifth.
The teams then traded singles before shaking hands after the seventh end.
With the game against Scotland being their lone game of the day, the Dunstone rink planned to use the time to regroup.
“We’ve got the rest of the day off, (we can) regroup and get ready for Team USA tomorrow,” Dunstone said in a release issued by Curling Canada. “We’ve been in this territory many, many times before. We’re 25 per cent of the way through the round robin. Even today, I thought we did a lot of things well. Ross just made every shot under the sun, and I couldn’t answer.”
After facing the American team, skipped by John Shuster, on Sunday afternoon, the Canadian team will play a pair of games on Monday.
The team will take on Poland, skipped by Konrad Stych, in the morning draw and Japan’s Tsuyoshi Yamagushi in the afternoon draw.