Dunstone satisfied with silver

Moments after losing the Canadian Curling Trials final in November, a devastated Matt Dunstone stood in front of a scrum of reporters and did his best to answer questions while fighting back tears.

Fast forward to this past Saturday in Utah, Dunstone suffered another heartbreaking final loss — this time, a 9-6 result in the world men’s curling championship game to Sweden’s Niklas Edin.

No one dreams of settling for second place, but on this occasion, Dunstone managed to step off the ice and immediately have an appreciation for what his team accomplished.

“It’s the happiest silver medal I’ve ever won,” Dunstone said at the time.

Now with a few days to let it sink in, the Winnipeg skip’s feelings have been further cemented.

“For us, we got nothing to hang our heads about. We beat a phenomenal team in (Scotland’s) Ross Whyte to get onto the podium and then we just ran into a total buzzsaw,” Dunstone told the Free Press on Tuesday.

“Like I said, nobody was going to beat Nik that day, and I mean, anytime we can get Team Canada on the podium I think is something we should be very proud of.

“And you know, it’s been an awesome run for Canadian curling between the Olympics and world championships. For our men’s and ladies’ teams, that’s four appearances and four podiums so to be a part of that is something we’re very proud of.”

After starting 2-2, Dunstone, Colton Lott, E.J. Harnden and Ryan Harnden rattled off a season-high 10 consecutive victories to reach the gold medal game — a rather remarkable feat considering how challenging the event is.

“Just the schedule itself is insane. Player wellness is probably not put at the forefront with a schedule like that,” said Dunstone, who played 15 games in nine days.

“It’s the happiest silver medal I’ve ever won.”

“On the final round-robin day, we played at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. and then 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. the next day so it was four draws in a row of high intensity curling where it’s if you lose, you go home — at least on that second day, anyway. I don’t think other than the opening Sunday that any of us had more than six hours of sleep in a single night.”

No complaints, though. It took eight trips to the Brier before Dunstone earned the right to grind it out against the world’s best with the maple leaf on his back.

Dunstone and Co. beat Alberta’s Kevin Koe to claim the Canadian crown last month in St. John’s, N.L.

“This is an opportunity we’ve been waiting a long time for. Yes, it was tiring, but at the end of the day, you don’t want to let this opportunity pass, and you want to do everything you can to end up on the podium and we did that,” he said.

“And now that our tank is completely empty, we can rest and recover.”

To do that, Dunstone, Lott and E.J. all decided to skip the trip to Toronto this week for the debut of the Rock League.

“This is an opportunity we’ve been waiting a long time for. Yes, it was tiring, but at the end of the day, you don’t want to let this opportunity pass, and you want to do everything you can to end up on the podium and we did that.”

“The flight home coming back from Salt Lake on Sunday was probably the most exhausted I have ever been,” Dunstone said. “I’m very at peace and pleased with my decision because I would have been there physically, but mentally, I would have been nowhere to be found.”

Regardless of the colour of medal, Saturday was going to be the final chapter of this iteration of Team Dunstone as E.J. is hanging up his broom and slider. Dunstone has secured a replacement and plans to announce who it is soon.

“It was obviously very emotional with the brothers having their last game together and our last game with E.J. and coming to that realization that our run has come to an end,” said Dunstone.

“We had a lot of great moments together, a lot of difficult moments, and the group’s become awfully close. The majority of that night was spent talking about that, reminiscing about that, and having a lot of laughs. It was a near-perfect end for what this group’s accomplished.”

Dunstone, who resides in Kamloops, B.C., anticipates he’ll be spending a fair bit of time in his hometown this off-season. In May, his two junior teams that won nationals (2013 and 2016) are being inducted into the Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame. Then sometime during the summer, the plan is to bring the Brier Tankard trophy to the Granite Curling Club for a celebration.

“We’ll make that happen and celebrate the right way,” he said.

He’s also hopeful that there will be more to celebrate next season.

“Now that it’s all done and over, how do we get the gold medal now at the world championship? That’s where the focus lies and that’s the awesome part about sport that it continues on and you don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

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