Saskatchewan’s Team Tardi among trio of rinks pre-qualified for Brier in Saskatoon

It’s still seven months until the 100th Montana’s Brier, but three rinks have already punched their tickets to compete in Saskatoon.

Curling Canada announced a trio of teams which have pre-qualified for next year’s Brier, including Saskatchewan’s Tyler Tardi rink.

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Formerly skipped by Mike McEwen, the team of Colton Flasch and twins Dan and Kevin Marsh parted ways with McEwen following the 2026 Brier in St. John’s, N.L. after failing to reach the playoff stage. The team added Tardi as its new skip after he curled second for the Kevin Koe rink out of Alberta and was an alternate on Brad Jacobs’ gold medal-winning rink at the 2026 Milan Olympics.

Team Tardi will represent Saskatchewan on home ice at the Brier, after the team finished top-four in the Canadian Team Ranking System last season.

As for McEwen’s Brier hopes, he will need to go through the province and win the 2027 SaskTel Tankard championship with his new rink, alongside teammates Rylan Kleiter, Joshua Mattern and Trevor Johnson.

Also qualifying for the Brier through the CTRS results is Team Jacobs, which topped the rankings with 444.85 points.

Jacobs won his second career Olympic gold medal in Italy along with Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant, Ben Hebert and Tardi as alternate, and was a semi-finalist at the 2026 Brier as Team Canada.

Rounding out the pre-qualified teams is Manitoba’s Matt Dunstone rink, which will be back to defend its 2026 Brier title.

Dunstone, brothers E.J. and Ryan Harnden and Colton Lott earned their first Brier championship as a team in March, with a 6-3 victory in the final over Team Koe.

Team Dunstone went on to represent Canada at the 2026 World Men’s Curling Championship in Ogden, Utah, where they earned a silver medal after a 9-6 loss to Sweden’s Niklas Edin rink in the final.

There will be a different look to Team Dunstone in Saskatoon, however, as E.J. Harnden has since retired from the sport. Long-time Brad Gushue third Mark Nichols will be filling Harnden’s role at second.

The first three qualifiers for the 2027 Scotties Tournament of Hearts were also announced, with Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson rink, Ontario’s Rachel Homan rink and British Columbia’s Taylor Reese-Hansen rinks all set to compete in Charlottetown, P.E.I. in February.

Both the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Brier will add a fourth pre-qualified team each, which Curling Canada said will be determined by the top-ranked CTRS teams which fail to qualify through provincial playdowns.

The 100th edition of the Brier in Saskatoon will begin on Feb. 26, 2027 at SaskTel Centre.