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Team Canada’s men’s curling team came into Sunday, February 8th with a 1-3 record, and facing a must win situation against the 3-1 Russian team. Oh, and by the way, the Russian squad is also the Russian Olympic team that put up a 3-6 record at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Jim Coleman calls the line as Daniel Grant and Chris Gallant sweep skip Matt Dunston’s rock into the house in earlier game against the Czech Republic (Photo Brian Chick)

Needing to win six of their nine round robin games, Canada could ill afford another “L” on their record, meaning they’d have to down the powerhouse Russian team to stay alive.

Canada brought its “A” game today, jumping out to a 4-0 lead on Russia through four ends, and then led 5-3 in the seventh. Down, but not out, the Russians picked up a deuce in the 8th to make it a 5-5 game in the 9th. Canada picked up a pair to lead 7-5 going into the 10th, and then stole two more to 9-5.

With the win, Canada improves to 2-3, and will face Spain (2-3) in the late game on Sunday.

“Well, as you know, we got off to a rough start and we lost some games that I expected to win, but this match-up against Russia was one of those games that was a toss-up in my mind,” noted Team Canada men’s coach Scott Grant. “That Russian team is their Olympic team, and a great team. So this was a great win for us. We made a few little adjustments coming into the match, and Matthew’s confidence finally got back to where it should be, and the guys played great.”

“We knew we had to come out big today,” said skip Matthew Dunstone. “We knew we were playing one of the best teams at the tournament today, and we had to raise our game to play them. I thought we did a great job as a team stepping up and playing big when we needed to.”

“It’s not how you start a tournament, but how you finish,” Dunstone added. “We’re hoping this is the start of something good for us, as we’re still in it. I like where we’re at right now. It was a must win. The three loss mark is where you have limit yourself, so we knew we were on our last legs today.”