Canada’s Team Dunstone back to winning ways at LGT World Men’s Curling Championship

OGDEN, Utah — Canada’s Team Matt Dunstone took a much-needed step in the right direction Monday morning at the 2026 LGT World Men’s Curling Championship.

After losing back-to-back games at the Weber County Ice Sheet in Ogden, Utah, the Canadian champs from Winnipeg got back to their winning ways with a 9-2 triumph over Poland’s Team Konrad Stych (1-4).

With the victory, Dunstone, vice-skip Colton Lott, second E.J. Harnden, lead Ryan Harnden, alternate Geoff Walker, team coach Caleb Flaxey and national coach Jeff Stoughton improved to 3-2.

More importantly, the victory restored some confidence after a disappointing past two days and reinforced what the team already knew about itself.

“It’s not far off,” said Dunstone. “We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel with what we were doing. The game (against Team U.S.A. on Sunday), we struggled without question. The (game against Scotland on Saturday), we felt like we played fairly well. We’ve been drawing well the entire time; just a little bit off with hits and being precise on the hit-and-rolls and shot management overall. That was the big conversation yesterday. We know when we’re going (well) what it looks like, what it feels like. We just really try to simplify everything and have everybody stick within their role on the team.”

That was evident even before the game as the team won last-rock advantage in the first end as both Lott and E.J. Harnden covered the pin — the team’s best pre-game performance of the event, and the first time it has had the first-end hammer since its opening game on Friday afternoon.

“We’ve been struggling a little bit with (pre-game) draw the button,” conceded Ryan Harnden. “So to have two really good ones, and cover the pin on both, was a good start to get a hammer, and I thought we played a good game.”

After a blanked first end, Dunstone made a wonderful steep-angle double takeout in the second end to score two, and he made another dandy double-takeout in the third to nullify a Polish scoring threat.

Stych, though, responded with two precision inturn draws in the fourth end to tie it up, and was shooting 97 per cent through four ends.

But it started coming apart for the Stych and the Poles — making the country’s first World Men’s Championship appearance — when the skip wrecked on a guard with his last-rock freeze attempt, allowing Dunstone to draw for a go-ahead deuce.

“(There was a) ‘here we go’ kind of feeling for sure,” said Dunstone of seeing Stych score the fourth-end deuce. “I mean, you can’t expect people to miss shots; everybody’s here for a reason. He showed exactly that on those two shots — world-class draws, and I couldn’t match him. But overall, we leaned heavy on them and eventually got misses.”

Stych missed last shots in the sixth and seventh ends, leading to steals of three and two respectively, and that was enough as the Polish team conceded.

Team Canada is back on the ice against Japan’s Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi (2-3) at 9 p.m. (all times Eastern), as the Montana’s Brier champs begin a grinding part of the schedule that sees them play morning-night split draws for three straight days.

“There’s a lot occurring over these next three or four days, which I think is good for us,” said Ryan Harnden. “All we can do now is just focus on curling after a little bit of sitting around the last two days with one game a day. I think it’s good to get in the thick of things with games each day.”

In other games Monday morning, Germany’s Team Marc Muskatewitz (4-2) scored a 10th-end deuce for a 7-6 triumph over Norway’s Team Andreas Haarstad (0-5); and Sweden’s Team Niklas Edin (6-0) remained perfect with a 7-6 win over South Korea’s Team Changmin Kim (2-4).

Japan, Switzerland’s Team Marco Hoesli (4-1), China’s Team Xiaoming Xu (3-2), Italy’s Team Stefano Spiller (3-2), Scotland’s Team Ross Whyte (3-2), Team John Shuster of the United States (2-3), and Czechia’s Team Lukas Klima (1-4) all had byes on Monday morning.

TSN/RDS2, the official broadcast partners of Curling Canada’s Season of Champions, will provide live coverage of Canada’s round-robin games, in addition to all playoff games. CLICK HERE for their complete broadcast schedule.

The list of teams, schedule information, and live scoring can be found by CLICKING HERE.

This story will be available in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/fr/nouvelles-media/.