 Canada's quest to win gold for the first time since 2017 gets underway Saturday afternoon when the 2025 BKT World Men's Curling Championship kicks off at the Temple Gardens Centre in Moose Jaw. Newly crowned Montana's Brier champions Team Brad Jacobs of Calgary has an opening-draw assignment Saturday at 2 p.m. (all times Central Standard) against Japan's Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi. They will then be back on the ice Saturday at 7 p.m. against European champs Team Marc Muskatewitz of Germany. Jacobs, vice-skip Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, lead Ben Hebert, alternate Tyler Tardi, team coach Paul Webster, and national coach Jeff Stoughton are looking to bring Canada its first world men's championship since Team Brad Gushue (with Gallant at second) prevailed in 2017 in Edmonton. Team Canada will close out the opening weekend with a Sunday matinee against South Korea's Team Hyojun Kim. There will be no shortage of medal contenders in Moose Jaw for an event that will decide a world champion and determine most of the countries that will compete for gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy. The combined results of the 2024 and 2025 World Championships will determine the first seven countries that join hosts Italy. Two more countries will come out of the 2025 Olympic Qualification Event that will take place in December in Kelowna, B.C. The Canadian team features three players - Kennedy (2016, ' 8), Gallant (2017) and Hebert (2016, ' 8) - who are former world champions. Jacobs skipped Canada to silver in 2013. Leading the field is reigning world champ Team Niklas Edin of Sweden, who beat Team Gushue in last year's final at Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Edin himself is a seven-time world champion. Scotland's Team Bruce Mouat arrives as the No. 1 team in the World Rankings (Team Jacobs is third), having won gold two years ago in Ottawa. Canada will face both of those squads early on, meeting the Scots Monday at 2 p.m. and the Swedes Tuesday at 9 a.m. Other teams in the field are Austria's Team Mathias Genner, China's Xiaonubg Xu, Czech Republic's Team Lukas Klima, Italy's Team Joel Retornaz, Norway's Team Magnus Ramsfjell, Switzerland's Team Yannick Schwaller, and the United States' Team Korey Dropkin. It will be the 66th edition of the world men's championship; Canada has won a leading 36 world championship titles, and Canadian teams have reached the podium 57 times in those 65 previous world championships, collecting 14 silver and seven bronze medals to go along with the gold medals. The 2025 BKT World Men's Championship will feature a 13-team field. Round-robin play will run through to Friday, April 4, with the top six teams making the playoffs; no tiebreakers will be played, so ties for playoff spots will be broken based on head-to-head results, and if that doesn't resolve the tie, then the pre-game Last-Shot Draw distances. The top two teams from round-robin play will be seeded directly into the semifinals on April 5 at 3 p.m., while the third-ranked team will play sixth and fourth will play fifth in the qualifying-round games earlier on April 5th at 9 a.m. The winners of the qualifying-round games will advance to the semifinals. The semifinal winners will play for gold on April 6 at 3 p.m., with the semifinal losers battling for bronze on April 6 at 9 a.m. |
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Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant (Photo: World Curling) are tied for second at the midway point of the competition.
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