PointsBet Invitational altered to help Canada’s top teams prepare for Olympic trials

CALGARY — It’s all about Olympic trials for the Canada’s top curling teams now.

November’s trials in Halifax will determine which men’s and women’s teams representing Canada at the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina, Italy.

Canada’s last Olympic gold medals in team curling were won in 2014, when teams skipped by Jennifer Jones and Brad Jacobs prevailed in Sochi, Russia.

Seven of the eight men’s teams and seven of the eight women’s teams bound for the Halifax trials are competing this week in the PointsBet Invitational that’s been altered to mimic the trials environment.

It’s not the quirky, single knockout event it was its first three years when there was the odd monster upset and a few favourites went home early.

Each team gets four round-robin games in Calgary. The finals are Sunday at WinSport’s Markin MacPhail Centre.

“For this year, with the Olympic trials, I think it’s a good switch,” Brad Gushue said Wednesday after his team opened with an 8-6 win over national junior men’s champion Calan MacIsaac.

The men’s and women’s PointsBet fields of 10 teams aside is divided into two pools. The top team in each pool meets in the championship games of the event that offers a prize purse of $300,000.

Curling Canada dropped the number of PointsBet teams from 32 to 20 this year.

With 14 already assured trials berths, five of the six remaining teams compete Oct. 20-26 in the Home Hardware Canadian Pre-Trials in Wolfville, N.S.

The men’s and women’s winners in Wolfville complete the trials field in Halifax.

So this year’s PointsBet is a trials dress rehearsal for the majority of teams.

“It makes a lot of sense to get a few more games in,” said Matt Dunstone.

“You get a feel for what Halifax can look like in a couple of months.”

Dunstone, whose team won the men’s title in last week’s AMJ Masters Grand Slam in London, Ont., opened with a 5-3 victory over Ryan Kleiter on Wednesday.

On the women’s side, Kate Cameron beat Kayla Skrlik 11-9, Corryn Brown was a 9-4 winner over Selena Sturmay and Beth Peterson edged Myla Plett 8-7.

In the evening draw, Canadian champion Brad Jacobs lost 6-5 to Kevin Koe, while Mike McEwen topped Sam Mooibroek 10-4.

Reigning Canadian and world champion Rachel Homan defeated Peterson 8-6, while Brown picked up another win, 13-5, over Kerri Einarson. Kaitlyn Lawes was also an 8-3 winner over Christina Black on the women’s side in the evening.

The March Madness format in the PointsBet’s first three years produced a few buzzy upsets and had an FA Cup soccer hook as underdogs aimed to topple giants.

In 2024, Canadian junior women’s champ Allyson MacNutt ousted four-time national champion Kerri Einarson in the first round, and Jordan McDonald’s 13th-seeded side took down No. 4 Dunstone and No. 5 Koe before bowing out to Gushue in the semifinal.

Travelling across the country to play potentially a single game wasn’t universally popular among curlers, however.

Curling Canada wanted teams bound for the Montana’s Curling Trials from Nov. 22 to 30 to get more quality game reps on arena ice in Calgary.

“This is a very important year for Curling Canada,” high-performance director David Murdoch said Wednesday. “We have our trials event in November. How can we maximize our season to give our teams a better platform for success?”

The rocks in Calgary are the same rocks they’ll throw in both Wolfville and Halifax.

“Little things, but it feels like they’re critical factors that can help our teams in the long run,” Murdoch said. “Is it a bit of a trials replication? In some things there is, and I think that helps us.”

Curling Canada retained a NextGen component at the PointsBet by keeping the Canadian junior men’s and women’s champions in the field and including top-ranked under-27 men’s and women’s sides.

Gushue, who skipped men’s teams to Olympic gold in 2006 and a bronze in 2022 after winning trials, says the stakes will be high for teams in Halifax come November.

“At the end of the day, if you win the trials in November and you don’t win another game throughout the year, you had an incredible year,” he said.

“That’s how this year is really judged. You could win every other event and lose the trials and it’s a (crappy) year.”

The six-time national champion has said this will be his final season of competitive curling.

Dunstone, who went 3-5 at the 2021 trials in Saskatoon, relishes the chance to play in Canadian curling’s most intense event again.

“I don’t try and fight reality. It’s awesome. I mean, one event every four years, best in Canada, that’s as good as it gets,” he said. “I feel nothing but excitement for that.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2025.