Canadian men playing for bronze at World Juniors

Canada’s quest for a world juniors gold medal fell short Monday, as the men’s team, skipped by Calan MacIsaac, lost their semifinal 7-6 to the United States’ Team Caden Hebert at the 2026 World Junior Curling Championships at Taarnby, Denmark.

There will be a chance at redemption, however, when the foursome from Truro, N.S., faces Scotland’s team Orrin Carson in the bronze-medal match.

“I thought we played a better game today than yesterday,” said MacIsaac of their last round-robin game, also versus the United States. “We got into some trouble in a couple ends, but got away with only giving up deuces, and managed to tie it up in the ninth.”

Needing to steal the tenth end for the win, skip MacIsaac, third Nathan Gray, second Owain Fisher, lead/vice-skip Christopher McCurdy, alternate Nick Mosher, coach Craig Burgess and team leader Daryell Nowlan had a decent end set up.

“We had a game plan for the 10th,” said MacIsaac. “Nathan set us up with a perfect freeze on his last shot.”

MacIsaac needed a soft-weight tap to remove the American stone and sit shot rock, but came up just short. Hebert didn’t have to throw his last rock.

“Unfortunately, I was about two feet light,” he said. “It didn’t bump them out of the four-foot. It stings, and probably will for a while.”

Immediately, though, focus shifted to Tuesday’s game with Scotland. Team Canada beat the Scots 6-4 in the group stage and will look to repeat that result and bring home some hardware from Tuesday’s bronze-medal game at 8 a.m. (Eastern).

“We need to forget about today,” said MacIsaac. “We’ll come back out firing against Scotland tomorrow.”

For scores and schedules, visit the World Curling site at: https://livescores.worldcurling.org/wjcc/aspnet/livescores?EventID=0 

Games can be streamed via paid subscription on the Curling Channel here: https://curlingchannel.tv/subscribe