Canada’s Team Gushue finishes round robin undefeated at 2024 Pan Continental Championships

LACOMBE, Alta. — That’s a perfect run for Canada’s Team Brad Gushue at the 2024 Pan Continental Curling Championships. The team from St. John’s, N.L., ran the table during the round robin at the 2024 Pan Continental Curling Championships with its seventh win.

On Thursday morning, Canada earned a 7-4 victory against China’s Team Xiaoming Xu (4-3) at Gary Moe Auto Group Sportsplex.

Heading into the Halloween morning game, skip Gushue, vice-skip Mark Nichols, second Brendan Bottcher, lead Geoff Walker, alternate Adam Casey, team coach Jeff Hoffart and national coach Jeff Stoughton knew they had the top seed in the semifinals win or lose.

It was the type of game that allowed the team to comfortably tune up for Canada’s upcoming playoff appearance, which is set for tonight at 7 p.m. (all times Mountain) against fourth-seed Team Shinya Abe of Japan (4-3).

Second-seed Team John Shuster of the United States (6-1) takes on third-seed China in the opposite semifinal. During the morning draw, the U.S.A. earned the second seed after an 8-2 win against Japan.

The winners advance to the gold-medal game on Saturday at 10 a.m. and the losers compete in the bronze-medal match scheduled for Friday at 2 p.m.

“The biggest thing is just to keep the momentum going. You don’t want to fall into bad habits and take any game or shot lightly. You want to keep doing your thing and keep building on getting better and better,” said Walker.  “The ice is tricky, but we’ve been doing a pretty good job of reading it and knowing where one might run a little bit more, and one might curl a little bit more, so we’ve been doing a good job, and I think we just need to keep that up.”

Team Gushue wants to extend its streak to three straight gold medals at the Pan Continental Curling Championships. 

Canada started the first end with hammer and scored a deuce on an open hit. The Canadians capitalized on back-to-back steals in the second-and-third ends. In the second end, Team Xu attempted a short runback double but jammed a Canadian counter in the four-foot and then it gave up another two after missing a hit in the third. After blanking the fourth, China scored two in the fifth.

“We’ve got to get a little bit more solid. I think we’re playing well, just not great. We’re just a few loose shots here and there, and I don’t think I’ve got a full grasp of the ice either, and maybe no skip does, to be quite honest,” Gushue said. “But I’d like to get a bit more confident where I’m putting the broom and I think if I could do that – because I like how we’re throwing it – then we should be in a position to make lots of shots.”

Canada blanked the sixth end, but China stole a single in the seventh when Canada couldn’t get a China stone out of play. From there on out, the teams exchanged single points through the 10th end.

A final berth to the 2025 BKT Tires World Men’s Curling Championship in Moose Jaw, Sask., was also on the line. South Korea’s Team Jeobeom Lee (3-4) earned the final spot for its country with a 9-7 win over Australia’s Team Hugh Millikin (2-5).

In other men’s action, New Zealand’s Team Anton Hood (2-5) earned a 13-3 win against Team Ken Hsu of Chinese Taipei (0-7). Chinese Taipei will be relegated to the B-division at next year’s Pan Continental men’s championships, while the winner of the B-division (determined this Saturday) will be promoted to the A group.

In the women’s competition, Canada’s Team Rachel Homan (6-0) of Ottawa can earn the top seed in the playoffs with a win against Japan’s Team Miyu Ueno (6-0) during the afternoon draw at 2 p.m.

Live scoring, standings and statistics for the 2024 Pan Continental Curling Championships is available by CLICKING HERE.

All games are being streamed live on The Curling Channel. CLICK HERE for details.

Ticket information for the 2024 Pan Continental Curling Championships is available by CLICKING HERE.

This story will be posted in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/category-all-posts-fr/?lang=fr