Matt Dunstone couldn't ask for a better start to his world championship debut wearing the Maple Leaf.
His Canadian rink got off to a flying 2-0 start in Ogden, Utah, with 5-2 and 9-2 wins over Korea and Italy on Friday.
“Pretty special moment putting on the uniform this morning knowing what was coming up,” Dunstone said in this post-game media scrum after beating Korea. “Got off to a nice, patient start here. Just solid win, didn’t do anything flashy or special, just did what we do and, yeah, feels awesome.”
Representing Canada has been a long time coming for the 30-year-old skip from Winnipeg. Before finally breaking through and winning the Brier this year in St. John’s, he was known as the “heartbreak boy” for always losing the big game.
Dunstone was the Brier runner-up in 2023, losing to Brad Gushue, and in 2025 he bowed out to Brad Jacobs, who also beat Dunstone at the 2025 Canadian Trials in the final to represent Canada at the 2026 Olympics.
Now, though, Dunstone has his chance, and so far, he’s running with it. Here are some takeaways from Canada’s strong start, and some notes on some of the other performances on opening day at the worlds.
Canada isn’t slow-playing anything
Dunstone and his teammates, Colton Lott, E.J. Harnden and Ryan Harnden didn't need much time to figure out the ice.
After that, the team went into attack mode and never looked back.
It started in the ninth end against Korea, after Canada converted with hammer for the first time all game in the eighth end to take a 4-2 lead.
As Dunstone went to throw his final stone without hammer, Korea was lying one in the back 12-foot on the wing behind a corner guard. There were a couple of options for Dunstone, but he elected to play the most aggressive after feeling like Korea couldn’t match him.
He went after the Korean stone and actually got an inside roll, making the potential blank nearly impossible, but also left the rock in a spot Korean fourth-stone thrower Kim Soo-hyuk felt he could chase. Soo-hyuk flashed the hit and Canada got a steal to ice the game.
While the second game was just more of what Canada built on from the opener, it was a little bit different as Dunstone was facing a fellow world's rookie in Stefano Spiller from Italy.
However, unlike Dunstone, Spiller is only 20 years old, and he was also just appointed to skip what is usually Joel Retornaz’s team for this world championship less than a month ago.
So, basically, Dunstone went to lunch.
After stealing one in the second on an easy miss from Spiller, the Canadians set up high-pressure shots on the last rock of the third and forth ends. In both cases, Canada stole three points to blow the game wide open.
Sweden starts off with a win
Even though Sweden’s Niklas Edin has won the most world championships ever with seven, his team's poor showing at the Olympics meant he was looking to start this tournament off with a victory.
Edin and Sweden went 2-7 at the Olympics as the defending gold-medalists, but they also were part of an incident that involved Edin’s third Oskar Eriksson and Canada’s third Marc Kennedy.
The "double-touch" fiasco that took over the Olympics when Eriksson accused Kennedy of cheating led to a heated argument on the ice and multiple rules changes mid-event by World Curling.
The incident seemed to derail Sweden for the rest of the week, while Canada rode some momentum from it all the way to gold.
Either way, starting off with a win for Edin is a positive thing.
Scotland is at the bottom of the table?
While it probably won’t last for long, one of the odds-on favourites to win this event is sitting dead last with a 0-2 record after the opening day.
Scotland’s Team Ross Whyte lost both of their games 6-5 on Friday, to Sweden and Japan, with the exact same scoreboard scenario occurring.
In the eighth end of each game, Whyte’s Scottish team tied the game only for Sweden and Japan to blank ninth ends, carrying the hammer into the 10th end, where they would score their winning point.
Whyte, 27, completed a three-peat of the Scottish national event last month. But this is only the first time Whyte has represented the country after Scottish curling selected to send world No. 1-ranked Bruce Mouat in the other years as, unlike Canada, the winner of the Scottish national event doesn’t get an automatic bid.
But if Whyte can make more shots like this one against Sweden, which scored three in the second end, they should be just fine.
