Canada completes two-win opening day at LGT World Men’s Curling Championship

OGDEN, Utah — After the grinding effort that was required to win Friday afternoon’s opening game, Canada’s Team Matt Dunstone was able to put it in cruise control early Friday night at the 2026 LGT World Men’s Curling Championship.

Dunstone’s Winnipeg team, rounded out by vice-skip Colton Lott, second E.J. Harnden, lead Ryan Harnden, alternate Geoff Walker, team coach Caleb Flaxey and national coach Jeff Stoughton, capped a perfect opening day at the Weber County Ice Sheet in Ogden, Utah, with a 9-2 victory over Italy’s Team Stefano Spiller.

The most drama came in the second end as Dunstone was delivering his last stone, a guard attempt. As the Harnden brothers were sweeping the stone, their brooms collided, resulting in Ryan falling and making contact with the running stone.

He wasn’t seriously injured on the play, but it left Spiller, who’s making his World Championship debut at the tender age of 20 skipping Joel Retornaz’s team, a short runback to score two that he missed. Instead, Canada stole one to open the scoring, and took a lead it never surrendered.

“I mean, we can joke about it now, but I was a little scared for him because he went down hard,” said Dunstone, before adding with a chuckle, “I know his knee is a little bit sore, and maybe the brothers will have to go and hash it out back at the hotel there, but it was nice to still get the steal. It was pretty fortunate because that’s a massive turning point in that game, obviously.”

Ryan Harnden was no worse for wear afterward, and could even laugh about the incident.

“Oh man, that hurt,” he said with a smile. “I think E.J. and I, our brooms got crossed and I went tumbling down. Yeah, that definitely hurt, but I feel good, I’m all right. I was joking to the guys that I meant to fall; maybe I psyched them out a bit. It (stealing one) was a big break, kind of the turning point. We flipped the hammer, and then I thought we were kind of all over them after that.”

The Canadians would pad the lead immediately, piling rocks in the four-foot behind a centre guard in the next two ends, and forcing Spiller into tough shots; each miss (he was light on a draw in the third, and overcurled on a draw in the fourth) produced steals of three to make it a 7-0 lead through four ends.

Italy was able to fight back for two in the fifth, but Dunstone’s angle raise takeout put two more on the board for Canada and prompted the Italians to concede.

“Awesome day,” summed up Dunstone. “I mean, obviously going back to back (draws), to get off the ice early, it’s even better. Awesome, awesome start.”

The wins were important, of course, but so, too, was establishing an early comfort level with the ice and stones, and, not insignificantly, the World Championship vibe.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and it’s Matt and Colton’s first time,” said Ryan Harnden. “So I thought we did a very good job of being patient that first game (against South Korea, when) the ice was a little bit tricky and slow and a little bit different than tonight, when it was really quick and straighter. So I thought we did a great job of being patient and just catching onto the ice a little bit better.”

Canada is on the ice just once on Saturday, at 4 p.m. (all times Eastern) against Scotland’s Team Ross Whyte (0-2).

In other games Friday night, Germany’s Team Marc Muskatewitz (1-0) doubled Team John Shuster (0-1) of the United States 10-5; Switzerland’s Team Marco Hoesli (1-0) outlasted Poland’s Team Konrad Stych (0-1) 11-9, dampening the first-ever appearance for a Polish team at the World Men’s Championship; and Japan’s Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi (1-0) shaded Scotland 6-5.

China’s Team Xiaoming Xu (1-0), Sweden’s Team Niklas Edin (1-0), Czechia’s Team Lukas Klima (0-1), South Korea’s Team Changmin Kim (0-1) and Norway’s Team Andreas Haarstad (0-1) all had byes on Friday night.

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/.