Team Canada takes first loss at 2026 LGT World Men’s Curling Championship

Canada’s Team Matt Dunstone ran into a Scottish juggernaut Saturday afternoon and it resulted in its first loss at the 2026 LGT World Men’s Curling Championship.

Ross Whyte’s Scottish team entered the game at the Weber County Ice Sheet in Ogden, Utah, with an 0-2 record, and clearly was on a mission to end that slide, and did it with an 8-3 victory over Team Canada.

The loss snapped a two-game win streak to open the LGT World Men’s Championship for Dunstone, vice-skip Colton Lott, second E.J. Harnden, lead Ryan Harnden, alternate Geoff Walker, team coach Caleb Flaxey and national coach Jeff Stoughton.

“Their backs were against the wall — 0-and-2, right?” said Dunstone. “You know you were going to get a pretty good version of them today and we did. All good; I mean, it’s a long week, and (they’re) a great team, too.”

The Scots — particularly Whyte — set the tone early. He produced a first-end deuce all on his own, making a spectacular hit-and-roll to sit frozen on his first delivery and snuff out a potential Canadian steal. After Dunstone barely missed a slash double takeout, Whyte made an open hit to score the pair.

An end later, Scotland kept applying pressure and Dunstone was light on a draw to the full four-foot, allowing Scotland to steal a single.

Whyte got his team out of trouble again in the third. Dunstone made a terrific runback double takeout to sit two, but Whyte answered with a hit-and-roll to sit shot buried. Dunstone’s attempt at a double-raise takeout for two overcurled, giving the Scots another steal and a 4-0 lead.

Dunstone drew for two in the fourth to get back into it, but when he came up just light on a freeze attempt in the fifth, Whyte followed with a raise double takeout to score three to make it 7-2 and put the game effectively out of reach.

The teams traded singles the next two ends before Team Dunstone offered handshakes.

“They played really well,” said Lott. We got behind the 8-ball early, and when a team’s playing like that it’s very hard to come back. As much as you want to win them all, it’s such a hard field and it really shows us going forward here the resilience and being able to bounce back after this game.”

Canada’s lone assignment on Sunday is against Team John Shuster (1-1) of the United States at 4 p.m. (all times Eastern).

Dunstone was philosophical about the defeat, knowing that running the table in a 13-team round robin is a tall task.

“If it were to happen, great, but obviously, it’s not going to anymore,” he said. “So we’ve got the rest of the day off, (we can) regroup and get ready for Team USA tomorrow. 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.”

“You know what, I have full confidence in Matt and everything he does,” added Lott. “We win as a team, lose as a team and I know we’ll all be great tomorrow.”

In other Saturday afternoon games, Sweden’s Team Niklas Edin (3-0) scored three in the second end and five more in the third en route to a 9-2 win over China’s Team Xiaoming Xu (1-1); Czechia’s Team Lukas Klima (1-2) stole single points in the eighth, ninth and 10th ends for a 6-5 win over Norway’s Team Andreas Haarstad (0-3); and South Korea’s Team Changmin Kim (1-2) was a 7-4 winner over Poland’s Team Konrad Stych (0-2).

Germany’s Team Marc Muskatewitz (2-0), Japan’s Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi (2-0), Switzerland’s Team Marco Hoesli (2-0), Italy’s Team Stefano Spiller (0-2) and the United States all had byes on Saturday afternoon.

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/.