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One of the biggest events leading up to the Winter Olympics begins this weekend when the Canadian curling competition takes place in Halifax.
The top eight men's teams and top eight women's teams in the country will compete for the chance to represent Canada at the four-player curling tournament this February in northern Italy. Canada's entry into the mixed doubles competition was decided last season when married couple Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant won their trials and then won an Olympic place for Canada, finishing sixth at the World Championships.
The men's and women's trials open on Saturday at the same venue and follow the same format. They start with a round-robin system in which all teams play each other once. The team with the best record advances directly to the final, while the second and third place teams will meet in the semi-finals next Thursday to decide who will face the No. 1 seed.
Unlike previous challenges, the final is a best-of-three series rather than a single game. Both finals will take place next Friday and Saturday, with the rubber matches taking place on Sunday if necessary.
Whoever passes the test will be tasked with restoring Canada's tarnished reputation in Olympic curling. Since Brad Jacobs and Jennifer Jones won gold in the men's and women's categories at the 2014 Games in Russia, Canada has only earned one medal in a four-person event, a bronze from Brad Gushue in 2022.
Worse, half of Canada's Olympic quartets failed to make the playoffs during that time, and not for lack of star power. The four skips who represented Canada at the 2018 and 2022 Games – Gushue, Jones, Rachel Homan and Kevin Coe – hold a total of 21 national championships and eight world titles.
Meanwhile, Canada's track record in the new discipline of mixed doubles is mixed. Caitlin Laws and John Morris won gold at the inaugural Olympic tournament in 2018, but Morris and Homan missed the playoffs in 2022.
So who will be wearing the maple leaf in Italy this February? To help answer this question, we asked our friends at Shoreview Sports Analytics crunch the numbers and find out which teams are most likely to win a trip to the Olympic Games.
As Shoreview's Mike Heenan explains, his firm compiled statistical rankings for each team using something called the Bradley-Terry model, which estimates each team's underlying strength based on paired comparisons—in other words, who will beat whom in individual matchups. The model places the most weight on the most recent results, decreasing the weight of each game until it drops out of consideration after two years. Using these rankings, Shoreview simulated the men's and women's trials 10,000 times and analyzed all of those simulations to see how often each team finished in each position.
Now let's look at both tournaments.
Female
You don't need a complex statistical model to tell you that Rachel Homan is the huge favorite to win this competition.
The 36-year-old and her teammates Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes are the undisputed queens of world women's curling, having won back-to-back world championships in 2024 and 2025. Last season they won more than 90 percent of their games, captured two Grand Slam titles and reached the finals of three other Grand Slam tournaments. They won all three Grand Slams this season.
Domestically, Homan's rink has become even more dominant – almost to the point of absurdity. They went undefeated in the last two Scotties Tournament of Hearts and haven't lost a game to a Canadian opponent in over a year.
Still, it's good to see if the numbers line up with the general consensus that Homan is going to run away with this thing. And they love it very much.
It's pretty wild. Homan has a 91 percent chance of winning the trials, while no one else, including four-time Scotties champion Kerri Einarson and Kaitlyn Laws, the 2018 Olympic mixed doubles gold medalist, has even a 1 in 20 shot.
Mike also pointed out to me that moving to a best-of-three final significantly reduces the likelihood of losing. Homan would be the “only” 82 percent favorite if the final was still a one-off.
So, a better question than “who will win the women's trials?” maybe “who will Homan beat in the final?” Here's what the numbers say:
Again, the Homan Empire casts a long shadow. Top Seven most likely all the matches involve Homan, and no one has a better than seven percent chance of beating her head-to-head in the final. The chances of anyone even forcing her to play a decisive third game are slim.
If Homan wins the trials, she will face tougher competition at the Olympics. With the vaunted depth of the Canadian women's team waning in recent years, Einarson is currently the only Canadian pass in the top 10 Ken Pomeroy's Global Power Rankings. And she's eighth.
The gold medal game in Italy is shaping up as a battle between Homan and Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni, who won four straight world championships before Homan beat her in the last two title games. Homan also beat Tirinzoni in all three Grand Slam finals this season.
However, both athletes will have to prove they can perform under the bright lights of the Olympic Games. In 2018, Homan was the reigning world champion along with Miskew and two other teammates when she played out a disastrous 4–5 tie and missed out on the playoffs in South Korea. In 2022 in Beijing, Homan again failed to advance after she and Morris tied 5–4 in mixed doubles. Tirinzoni also missed the playoffs with a 4-5 record in 2018 and then suffered losses in the semi-finals and bronze medal game after winning 8-1 in the round-robin.
Male
While the women's trials appear to be little more than Homan's coronation, the men's trials promise a lot more action. With no clear favorite in the field, several players may well be hoping for a spot in Italy next weekend.
Here's what the Shoreview model says:
What's the difference, huh? The “favorite” has only a 1 in 3 chance of winning here, with another guy next to him and another with a decent 1 in 5 shot. Skip with the fourth best odds is 7.4 percent – not great, but still much better than the number 4 woman, who has less than 1 percent.
I think most people would agree that Brad Jacobs is the slight favorite. The 40-year-old defending Brier champion won Olympic gold in 2014 and nearly made it back eight years later, losing to Gushue in the final of the last Canadian trials. Jacobs then stepped away from curling for a while before returning and eventually joining Mark Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert in the spring of 2024. The four veterans had a great first season together, winning the Brier and taking bronze at the World Championships after a semi-final loss to eventual champion Bruce Mouat of Scotland.
Anyone who doesn't follow curling closely might be surprised to see Matt Dunstone as the de facto co-favorite alongside Jacobs. The 30-year-old has never won a Brier and his only appearance at the Canadian Trials as a skip resulted in a 3-5 finish four years ago. But Dunston has been a constant presence at the Brier, reaching the semifinals in four of the last five years and reaching the final twice — including last season, when Jacobs hit a final-stone triple to beat him 5-3. Fun fact: Brothers Ryan and E.J. The Hardens, who form the core of Dunston's team, won Olympic gold with Jacobs in 2014.
The Dunston rink, which also features third Colton Lott, has been the top Canadian team on the Grand Slam tour this season, winning one title and reaching the finals of two other tournaments. In the first match they beat Scotsman Ross White, and in the next two they lost to Muath, the reigning world champion.
Muath stays on top Pomeroy's Global Male Strength RankingsDunston and Jacobs share second place, with John Epping following behind them.
Epping, who is given a 1-in-5 chance by Shoreview's model to win the Trials, has a solid 31-11 record this season, but is just 6-8 against Pomeroy's top-10 opponents and has never played in a Brier title match. However, he did well at last year's Canadian Championships after teaming up with young brothers Jacob and Tanner Horgan. They went 6-2 but missed the playoffs after losing the tiebreaker.
Another thing that may surprise many about Shoreview's predictions is that Brad Gushue's chances of winning are less than two percent. Just 18 months ago, Gushue won his third straight Brier title, giving him a career-high six titles. But he hasn't won a tournament since then as the decision to replace EJ Harden with former skip Brendan Bottcher at No. 2 didn't pan out. Gushue's squad is just 2-9 against top-10 Pomeroy opponents this season, and the 45-year-old skip announced in September that he would retire after this season.
Here's a look at the most likely matches in the men's final and each pass's chances of winning them:
As you can see here, there is a wide range of likely outcomes for the men's tournament. And with about a 50/50 chance of the finale lasting all three games, that's a good chance for a dramatic finale.
