After finally being able to earn his promotion from deputy here in Canada last month at the Brier, the guy they call “the sheriff” around the curling rinks here in Canada is going to have to wait at least one more year to start earning the rank of “Commandant” on the world stage.

But indications are he may be able to do that with most of his current team behind him.

Matt Dunstone and the rest of Team Canada were forced to accept silver at this year’s World Curling Championship final in Ogden, Utah on Saturday in a 9-6 loss to the Swedes in the final.

Dunstone — who led the top ranked team headed into the tournament — would squeeze into the gold medal game after a pair of nail-biting, final stone thrillers in the quarter and semi-final match ups with the Italians and the Scots, respectively.

However, the Kamloops-based skipper’s Championship final would not really allow that type of curling magic to manifest itself once more.

Instead, it was Niklas Edin’s turn to thrive, as the Swedish skip would turn around his game dramatically from the uncharacteristically poor effort the World Championship veteran would put in against Dunstone and Team Canada in the round-robin.

“Ran into a buzz saw today,” Dunstone told Curling Canada after the final.  “They threw everything they had at us, and unfortunately we couldn’t find any answers for it.”

After Edin would blow his draw weight in the first end of their round-robin clash early in the tournament which allowed Dunstone and Team Canada to steal 4 and close out that game in just 6 ends, there was no such fault in his or the rest of Team Sweden’s the game on Saturday.

Edin’s team would hold the hammer in the first end by virtue of their higher positioning coming out of the round robin, even though both teams would end the twelve-match competition at 10-2.  (Dunstone would be relegated to a quarter-final match on the basis of the Draw Shot Challenge results from the tournament, after head-to-head wins weren’t able to determine seeding among Canada, Sweden and Scotland)

Edin would score a pair in the first — and every subsequent end the Swedes would score while holding the hammer — by hitting and getting the right amount of roll on higher-risk shots, turning the tables on a Dunstone-led team that would earn its way into the final on a more aggressive approach than other teams.

This ultimately had Team Canada playing from a defensive posture the entire way through the final.

Dunstone would make it a one-point game in the 5th after a raised double take-out — using Sweden’s own guard as the runner — to make it 4-3 at the halfway point.

However, Edin’s squad would not buckle.

Instead, the two teams would go deuce-for-deuce in each subsequent end until the 9th, when Dunstone would elect to draw on his first shot of the end, coming up heavy and ending up as the third shot stone — still facing two Swedish stones on opposite sides of the four-foot riding the T-line.

Edin would throw up a guard on the 12-foot along the centerline, taking away any prospect of Dunstone trying a double take-out for the deuce.

This would force his hand to draw for his single, which Dunstone would accomplish.

But while scoring one, it all but sealed their fate, as Team Canada would be down 8-6 heading into the final frame and without last rock.

Edin would simply run Dunstone out of rocks enroute to a record 8th Men’s World Curling title of his storied career.

“That’s the way it goes,” said Dunstone in talking about his 2nd place finish at his first World Curling Championships.  “That’s the reason they’ve (Team Edin) has won 8 of these now.”

Team Dunstone expected to stay largely intact

While nothing formal has been announced yet, indications are that Team Dunstone may end up being largely the same as it was headed into the final tournament of the season, despite this being the end of the quadrennial.

Skip Matt Dunstone, speaking with Curling Canada after the medals were handed out, hinted that only one of their on-ice foursome is moving on.

“We have somebody that’s locked and loaded,” said Dunstone when asked about timelines for when he may announce changes to the structure of the team now that E.J. Harnden — his second — is retired from professional action as of the final stone in Ogden.

“We’ll probably just get home, sleep for — what I hope — is a very long time, then you’ll hear from us in just a couple of days about who is going to be our new second,” said Dunstone.

E.J. Harnden, the elder of the “Harnden brothers” and a veteran of nearly 20 years of top-ranked men’s curling in Canada, announced late last year his intention to call it a career after this season was over.

The victory by Team Dunstone at the Brier last month in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador extended that season until Saturday’s final.

For his part, E.J. also seemingly confirmed that his brother Ryan and Colton Lott will continue on with Dunstone next season.

“I’m going to really enjoy watching Ryan and Colton and Matt continue to play and continue to be one of the best teams in this sport for a long time coming,” said Harnden, who admitted at the time that the full gravity of his decision to retire hadn’t fully hit him to that point.

“Probably going to sink in more in the hours ahead and in the coming days,” conceded Harnden.

“I thought today we played well,” added Harnden after the medal ceremony.

“They were just phenomenal,” said Harnden in his praise of Team Edin, which came into the tournament ranked 13th in the world.  “Nik showed today why he’s one of the best to ever play, and unfortunately he did it against us in a World [Championship] final,” he chuckled.

The elder Harnden brother joined Team Dunstone midway through the 2024-25 season to try to capture one more shot at Olympic gold with his younger brother, on top of a first-ever World Curling Championship gold medal.

Despite Harnden and Team Dunstone coming up just short on both of those fronts, (Team Dunstone finished runner-up behind Brad Jacobs’ rink at the Olympic Trials in Halifax last year) the elder Harnden suggests he’s walking away from the game with his head held high.

“I couldn’t have asked for anything more,” said Harnden.  “To end my career as a Brier champion and a World silver medalists, and to do it with this group… I don’t think it can get any better than this.”

Harnden reunited with his younger brother Ryan on Team Dunstone in December of 2024 after the two went their separate ways at the start of the quadrennial in the 2022-23 season.

It followed the surprise announcement ahead of that season from their long-time skip Brad Jacobs about his intention to “step away” from competitive curling for — what later turned out to be — just one season.

Most professional curlers and teams now tend to plan their future around the cycle of the Winter Olympics, meaning the end of this year’s World Curling Championships starts a new quadrennial, or four-year plan, for many teams and players.

Several Canadian teams, including the Kamloops-based professional Women’s squad led by Corryn Brown, have decided to go their own ways.

Matt Dunstone’s long-time partner, Erin Pincott, is caught up in that transition, as she was the third on Team Brown.

With the Harnden’s loss of their long-time skipper — who they had been with since the 2007/08 season — the brothers would move on, stacking the front-ends of top-tier foursomes, with Ryan landing on Team Dunstone and E.J. taking up the role of Brad Gushue’s second for just over two seasons before he would part ways with the East Coast powerhouse.

While it’s not clear how the conversations got started, shortly after the 2025 curling season began, a change in Team Dunstone’s line-up was announced, with B.J. Neufeld being shifted out and Colton Lott moving up from second to third — clearing the path for E.J. to join Dunstone’s squad as the second.

The “brothers” were highly sought after players — particularly together — both for their curling experience and their dedication to the athletic side of the sport.

E.J. and Ryan are credited with helping usher in an awakening among professional curlers to the larger role that sweepers can play in the sport.

Even into the early part of the 21st century, curling was dominated by men and women who were more interested in being tacticians, rather than athletes.

Dubbed “fitness freaks” by some, the brothers are leading advocates for curlers “hitting the gym” as much as the ice to build up their strength and endurance to handle the physical demands of an expanding professional schedule, as well as major tournaments.

This year’s World Championships saw the 13 teams involved play a 12-game round-robin, with Team Dunstone going the deepest of them all, playing a total of 15 games over the course of nine days.

While mentioning several times during post-game interviews the level of exhaustion the team was going through during the World Championship, Dunstone suggests the physical strain is something they prepared themselves for as they worked toward their ultimate goals.

“Really sad it’s over,” said Dunstone in reflecting on the overall tournament and the silver medal he’ll be bringing back to Kamloops.  “Hard to believe that this version of this team has come to an end.”

Team Dunstone — in the roughly year-and-a-half that saw the reunited Harnden brothers playing together — would see its world ranking hit number 2 at one point, with the foursome entering the tournament as the number 4 team in the World and the top-ranked squad in the competition.

This, as after Ross Whyte — ranked 5th in the World — supplanted world number 1 Bruce Mowat as Scotland’s representative in Ogden.

He would go on to take bronze at this year’s event in the relegation final against the host Team USA squad led by John Shuster, which came into the tournament ranked number 8 in the world.

Yannick Schwaller — ranked world number 3 — would be upset in the Swiss finals by 2025 World Junior champion Marco Hoseli, who would eventually fall to the Americans in the first round of the playoffs in Utah.

Canada’s Brad Jacobs, who didn’t compete in this year’s Brier to stay fresh for the Olympics, was ranked number 2 in the world leading into the March 27th to April 4th competition.

As for a retooled Dunstone team showing up at next year’s World Curling Championships in a similar position, Dunstone suggests this is the ultimate goal.

“Just wanna get back and finish one step better,” said Dunstone.

If Dunstone makes it through another Brier victory, he won’t have to cross international lines to get to the next World Curling Championships, as they are due to be held in St. John, New Brunswick around this time next year, March 26th to April 4th, 2027.

The conclusion of the tournament in Ogden, Utah also bring an end to the career of Vic Rauter, who leaves the game having called virtually all of the major curling tournaments for TSN over the past 40 years.

–With Files from Al Cameron and Curling Canada