Plenty of storylines in play at Las Vegas world men’s curling championship

The 2022 Season of Champions wraps up in Las Vegas with the World Men’s Curling Championship.

Thirteen teams from around the globe will go head-to-head at Orleans Arena from April 2-10 with the world title on the line.

The top six advance to the playoffs following a 12-game round robin. The top two seeds advance straight to the semi-final round while the third seed plays No. 6 and No. 4 battles No. 5 in the first round of the playoffs.

Canada will be represented by 2022 Brier winner Brad Gushue for the third time since 2017 while Olympic champion Niklas Edin of Sweden will look to capture an incredible sixth world title.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the top teams competing and other storylines to watch out for in Sin City.

Last Dance For Team Gushue

What a year it has been for Brad Gushue and the boys from St. John’s, Nfld.

They were the best team all week at November’s Tim Hortons Curling Trials in Saskatoon, losing just one game before beating Team Brad Jacobs in the final to earn the Maple Leaf and a ticket to the Beijing Olympics.

At the Winter Games, Gushue and company got Canada back on the podium in four-person curling for the first time since 2014, defeating John Shuster and his American rink in the bronze-medal game.

“I, certainly with my age, and our team, we’ve got enough perspective to know what we did, winning a bronze, is pretty darn good,” Gushue told TSN.ca at the Tim Hortons Brier in March. “We’re one of three teams to stand on the podium in the world. Even if we played up to our capabilities in Beijing, there’s a chance Niklas [Edin] or Bruce [Mouat] could have beaten us anyway. We’re proud of it, hopefully Canadians are proud of it. I just think we need to be realistic going forward.”

Just a few weeks later, thanks to an expanded field with three Wild Card rinks, Gushue’s team became the first to compete at the Brier after representing the country at the Olympics in the same season. Curling legend Sandra Schmirler and her Saskatchewan-based squad competed as Team Canada at the 1998 Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Regina less than a week after capturing the first Olympic curling gold medal in Nagano, Japan.

Still dealing with the exhaustion of qualifying and playing in an Olympics halfway around the world, Gushue said their expectations for the Lethbridge Brier in Alberta were lower compared to years past. That didn’t look like the case as they posted a perfect 8-0 record in round robin play. Then the team ran into a speed bump. Well, more like a brick wall.

On Friday, ahead of their page seeding game against Brendan Bottcher and the defending champs, third Mark Nichols tested positive for COVID-19 and would miss the rest of the tournament. With no alternate, Team Gushue would have to play the rest of the way with just three curlers, something the skip likened to playing an entire hockey game on the penalty kill.

After losing the page seeding match, Gushue was forced to battle a curling gauntlet of Colton Flasch in the 3 vs. 4 game, Bottcher in the semi-final and finally Kevin Koe the championship tilt. Incredibly, they found a way to get it done for a fourth Brier Tankard in front of packed Enmax Centre for one of the most compelling Canadian curling tales in history.

In a post-game interview, Brett Gallant, who was long rumoured to be leaving the team at season’s end, got emotional knowing they would get to play together at the world championships in Las Vegas.

"When Mark got sick, I thought it would be a really tough way to end eight years, without him on the ice," Gallant said. “So, it means a lot that if this is our last season, that we’re going to go out with all four of us, side by side. Mark’s one of my best friends and I’m really looking forward to getting on the ice with him again.”

Team Gushue later confirmed Gallant would be leaving the team after the season as he will be getting married to fellow curler Jocelyn Peterman and moving to Alberta this summer. The other three members of the team will continue to play together, saying an announcement regarding Gallant’s replacement will be made available in the coming weeks.

E.J. Harnden, second of the recently disbanded Brad Jacobs’ rink, will be the team’s alternate at worlds.

The foursome of Gushue, Nichols, Gallant and Geoff Walker are arguably the greatest Canadian men’s team of all-time, winning four of the last six Canadian championships as well as the 2017 world championship and 11 Grand Slams over their eight years together. The worlds in Las Vegas will be the last major international event we will see them on the ice together.

Going out on top as world champions for the second time would be quite the storybook ending for the current version Team Gushue.

The Champs Are Here

Niklas Edin and his Swedish curling team are on some sort of hot streak.

Not only are they fresh off standing atop the podium at the Winter Olympics in February but they are the reigning three-time defending world men’s curling champions.

Edin, third Oskar Eriksson, second Rasmus Wrana and lead Christoffer Sundgren topped the then defending world champions in Team Gushue in the 2018 gold-medal game which also took place in Las Vegas. They defeated Team Kevin Koe in the 2019 final in Lethbridge and won their third in a row last year inside the Calgary bubble with a win over Scotland’s Bruce Mouat. The 2020 World Men’s Curling Championship was cancelled because of COVID-19.

No team aside from Edin’s rink has captured three consecutive world men’s curling titles, so winning a fourth would only add to their legacy as one of the greatest teams of all-time. Edin, 36, and Eriksson, 30, also won gold in 2013 and 2015 at the worlds.

In total, Sweden has won the men’s worlds 10 times, good enough for second behind Canada, which has won it 36 times.

Edin (No. 4 world ranking) and Gushue (No. 1 world ranking) will be the favourites coming in and no one should be surprised if they’re the last two teams standing when championship Sunday rolls around.

The Competition

Much like the recent World Women’s Curling Championship, the field at this year’s men’s worlds is not as strong as years past due to the Olympics knocking out some of the best teams.

Most notably, Scotland’s Team Bruce Mouat, the silver medallists from Beijing and last year’s worlds, weren’t able to compete in their country’s playdowns because it coincided with their Olympic schedule.

"We take great pride in being full-time athletes and always look forward to representing Scotland when given the opportunity. We wish Team Paterson all the best at the championship,” Team Mouat, ranked second in the world, said in a statement.

"It is regretted that there was an avoidable clash of dates with the Scottish Championship and our return from the Winter Olympic Games. We would have relished the opportunity to participate in both.”

Kyle Waddell, ranked 32nd in the world, will skip Scotland at the worlds for the first time in his career. Ross Paterson throws last rocks on this team. 

Team Peter De Cruz, winners of four bronze medals for Switzerland at the world championship, went straight from the Olympics to nationals, but weren’t able to best Team Yannick Schwaller. The 26-year-old Schwaller, who skipped the Swiss to a world junior title in 2014, will make his men's world championship debut in Las Vegas.

For just the second time since 2015, the Americans will be represented by a skip not named John Shuster as 26-year-old Korey Dropkin, skip of the team that goes by the nickname of YoungBucks, will also make his debut at the event.

Dropkin was an alternate for Shuster at the 2019 worlds and lost a best-of-three series to the veteran (two games to one) at the United States Olympic trials in November. Team Dropkin is the face of the next generation of American male curlers, so it should be fun to see what they can do on home soil in Vegas.

Gushue, Edin and Italy’s Joel Retornaz, ranked 14th in the world, are the only teams that will compete at the both the Olympics and men’s worlds this season. They're also the highest three ranked teams in the Vegas field. 

Here’s a look at the rest of the field competing at the men’s worlds:

Canada – Brad Gushue (No. 1 world ranking)
Czech Republic - Lukáš Klíma (No. 41)
Denmark - Tobias Thune (No. 72) 
Finland - Kalle Kiiskinen (replacement for RCF) (No. 79)
Germany – Sixten Totzek (No. 24)
Italy – Joel Retornaz (No. 14)
Netherlands - Wouter Gösgens (No. 39)
Norway – Magnus Ramsfjell (No. 34)
Scotland – Kyle Waddell (No. 32)
South Korea - Kim Chang-min (No. 40)
Sweden – Niklas Edin (No. 4)
Switzerland – Yannick Schwaller (No. 15)
United States – Korey Dropkin (No. 44)

No-tick Rule

A rule change could make things a little more unpredictable in Vegas.

Like the women’s worlds in Prince George, B.C., the World Curling Federation will experiment with a no-tick rule at this year’s World Men’s Curling Championship.

Any guard on the centre line can’t be touched until the first five rocks are thrown in any given end. Over the past few years, teams have honed the skill of the tick-shot – delicately pushing guards to the sides of the sheets, but not removing them – in an effort to get around free guard zone which says no rocks in front of the house can be removed until five rocks are thrown.

The idea behind the experiment is to see if it leads to closer games and less blanked ends. However, the general consensus among curlers in Prince George was that the world championship was not the right time to try out a radical rule change.

"It's a total lack of respect of the players to try a no-tick," Swedish skip Anna Hasselborg told the Canadian Press. "It's such a big rule change at the world championships. I think it's very, very wrong."

Time will tell how the no-tick experiment will affect play at the men’s worlds.