By Canadian Press

Canada’s Kevin Koe on home ice for world men’s curling championship

Mar 29, 2019 | 9:14 AM

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. — Much has changed since Ben Hebert made his world men’s curling championship debut over a decade ago.

At that time, the national playdowns were more challenging than the world championships. Canada was always a good bet to win international events and a strong favourite to at least be on the podium.

“There was a lot of really soft games,” Hebert said of the 2008 world playdowns. “We were guaranteed pretty much to make the playoffs. It was just whether or not we were going to have hammer in the 1-2 game.”

The rest of the world — in both men’s and women’s play — has caught up in recent years.

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Canada’s four-player teams didn’t win medals at the 2018 Winter Olympics and Canada missed the six-team playoffs at the recent women’s world championship.

Hebert and his Calgary-based team of skip Kevin Koe, third B.J. Neufeld and second Colton Flasch will try to get Canada back on track at the 2019 world championship starting Saturday at the Enmax Centre.

Koe headlines a field that includes three-time world champion Niklas Edin of Sweden, reigning Olympic champ John Shuster of the United States, European champion Bruce Mouat of Scotland and Switzerland’s Peter De Cruz.

Koe settled for a fourth-place finish last year at the Pyeongchang Games, falling to De Cruz in the bronze-medal game. 

“That was a different event and a different team,” Koe said on a pre-event conference call. “For us, we’re not going to approach it any different. We’ve put in the work for this worlds similar to how we prepared for the Brier.

“It’s just up to us to go and take care of business and just play like we can and how we did at the Brier. If we do that, I’ll think we’ll be in good shape.”

The Alberta side ran the table this month in Brandon, Man., to book the ticket for the worlds. Koe will have home-ice advantage for the first time in four appearances at this event.

“I think for us we’ll just embrace that and enjoy it,” Koe said. “We’ll have pretty much a full arena cheering for us the whole week. That’ll definitely help us on and I don’t think it’ll put too much added pressure on us.

“We’re Team Canada at a world curling championship, there’s enough pressure as it is to perform.”

This will be the first worlds appearance for Neufeld and Flasch, who replaced Marc Kennedy and Brent Laing at the start of this season. 

Hebert’s 2008 world title came with skip Kevin Martin. They took silver the next year and won Olympic gold at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Koe won world gold in 2010 and finished fourth at the 2014 playdowns. Koe and Hebert won gold when they last played at a world championship in 2016.

“If we get our draw weight early and the ice is similar to what it was at the Brier, we’re going to have a really good chance,” Hebert said. “All the hard work has been put in, we just have to go out and perform now.”

There are several reasons why international teams have improved over the last decade.

Many federations have improved funding and a number of curlers have become full-time athletes. Several Canadians — both current and retired players — are coaching international teams and the emergence of the Grand Slam circuit has raised everyone’s game.

Instead of one or two teams giving Canada a real test, there are now four or five legitimate gold-medal contenders.

The days of a significant dropoff in field quality after the nationals are over. 

“I don’t expect the worlds to be any easier than the Brier,” Hebert said. “I think the top teams at the world level are just as good as the top teams in Canada so we’re going to have to go and play really, really well.”

Edin defeated Canada’s Brad Gushue in last year’s final in Las Vegas.

Koe will open against South Korea’s SooHyuk Kim on Saturday afternoon and play Russia’s Sergey Glukhov in the evening. 

Rounding out the 13-team field are China’s Qiang Zou, Germany’s Marc Muskatewitz, Italy’s Joel Retornaz, Japan’s Yuta Matsumura, Jaap Van Dorp of the Netherlands and Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell.

The top six teams at the end of round-robin play will qualify for the playoffs starting April 6.

Medal games are set for April 7.

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Follow @GregoryStrongCP on Twitter.

Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press