Canada’s Dunstone falls to Scotland’s Whyte for 1st loss at men’s curling worlds

Matt Dunstone’s Canadian crew gave up a crucial three points in the fifth end to Ross Whyte of Scotland and couldn’t recover, losing their first game of the world men’s curling championship 8-3 in eight ends Saturday.

Dunstone, with third Colton Lott, second E.J. Harnden and lead Ryan Harnden, are 2-1 after four draws at the Weber County Ice Sheet.

Winless Scotland scored a deuce in the first end, then had steals of one in the second and third ends before Canada struck for two in the fourth to make it a 4-2 game. Whyte’s three in the fifth end led to early handshakes after the teams traded single points over the next two ends.

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

Sweden, which defeated China 9-2, leads the 13-team event with a 3-0 record. Germany, Japan and Switzerland are all 2-0, while Canada and China are at 2-1.

Dunstone will play on Sunday against the United States, who were 1-1 heading into Saturday’s late draw against 1-2 Scotland.