Eight Ends: Takeaways from Rock League’s debut season

Professional curling arrived last week at TMU Mattamy Athletic Centre with Rock League and this was curling unleashed.

April 14, 2026

Jonathan Brazeau

TORONTO — Are you not entertained?

Professional curling arrived last week at TMU Mattamy Athletic Centre with Rock League. Six franchises with five men’s players and five women’s players each competed in a variety of curling disciplines from men’s and women’s fours to mixed doubles and mixed fours.

This was “curling unleashed” with new rules designed to dial the fun factor amp up to 11. Four-player team games were played to seven ends — down from eight at tour events and 10 at national and international competitions — with thinking time also reduced to raise the pressure valve. Covering the pinhole in the final end was worth two points, leading to thrilling comebacks. Extra ends were replaced with draw-to-the-button shootouts for all matches, including the championship final.

The Between the Sheets Pub, featuring a sheet-side spectator area, and music with a more alternative edge playing throughout all the action kept the energy levels high for players and fans alike down at ice level.

You couldn’t have scripted a better ending between Shield Curling Club and Typhoon Curling Club in Sunday's final. Shield captain Brad Jacobs skipped his men’s team to victory over Typhoon’s Niklas Edin, while Typhoon’s Anna Hasselborg won the women’s game against Shield’s Kerri Einarson.

Over to you Benoît Schwarz-van Berkel and Marlee Powers, as it all came down to Shield’s mixed doubles team making a draw to the button in a shootout. Jacobs was a little bit nervous, and Einarson covered her eyes, but Schwarz-van Berkel’s rock landed right on the lid. Just wild.

Season 1 was just a taste of what’s to come with a condensed one-week schedule, a “proof of concept” if you will, to ride the wake of the Olympic Winter Games buzz. As curlers swap their brooms for golf clubs, the work behind the scenes ramps up at The Curling Group, which owns and operates both Rock League and the Grand Slam of Curling.

Preparation is already underway for Rock League Season 2, with a four-week regular season plus an 11-day playoff and championship round scheduled for next year. The future of curling is here.

‍FIRST END: Rock League’s rule changes could have an impact on curling as a whole, too.

Jacobs said his favourite new rule was the full no-tick, where curlers couldn’t hit any stones sitting in the free-guard zone while it was in effect and not just those on the centre line.

“I actually emailed some members of the World Curling Federation this morning and said we ought to seriously put this on the table as a rule effective in four-person men's and women's curling on the tour because I think it's needed now,” Jacobs said after Sunday’s final.

SECOND END: Kudos to strategic advisors Jennifer Jones and John Morris for creating balanced rosters for the franchises. Three teams tied at the top of the round-robin standings with 3-2 records and three-and-a-half points thanks to sweeps, plus a fourth team at 3-2 and three points in Typhoon.

Of the 15 round-robin matches, only three of them were sweeps, with none through the first two days of competition. There was just one sweep during Saturday’s mixed fours — achieved by Maple United, which missed the playoffs, over eventual champion Shield Curling Club.

Sunday’s semifinals saw the lower seeds win both matches as No. 3 Typhoon and No. 4 Shield advanced to the championship final.

“We were doing the best we could for a team, for the league,” Schwarz-van Berkel said. “We were focused. We were here to win. We tried to play as good as we could as a team. I think we managed the lineups and everything in a smart way.

“We had some highs and lows during the week. I think we managed the lows well and you need a bit of luck. We had a bit of luck, it's such a tight field. It's so close between all six teams, but that's definitely a very strong team, and we were on top at the end, so it feels very good. Super cool.”

We've only scratched the surface of analysis. Expect more in-depth number-crunching in next week's Eight Ends.

‍THIRD END: “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” — Schwarz-van Berkel during the draw-to-the-button shootout, probably.

Jokes aside, Schwarz-van Berkel was cool as a cucumber when he placed his shooter on the pinhole. That’s clutch. There was no question who was taking the Rock League MVP award after that, as Schwarz-van Berkel was money all week and a slam-dunk selection.

Not bad for someone who wasn’t even named to a Rock League franchise when rosters were revealed in December. Although Schwarz-van Berkel was sad he wasn’t selected, when a spot opened up on Shield last month, he was honoured to get the call.

“That's an amazing way to end the season,” he said. “I mean, it's a dream. It's a dream way to win a championship, no question, and even with more people, it feels good. It's cool.”

‍FOURTH END: Agnes Knochenhauer and Anna Hasselborg have a bond like few others in curling. They were born on the same day and in the same city: May 5, 1989, in Stockholm, Sweden. They’ve been playing together since juniors and have won just about everything, including a world junior championship, eight Grand Slam of Curling titles and two Olympic gold medals.

Rock League featured quite a few instances of friends becoming foes, and for the first time in a long time, Knochenhauer and Hasselborg were on opposing teams.

Knochenhauer said they’re like sisters, but what was it like playing against Hasselborg in the Rock League final?

“I don't really think of it,” Knochenhauer said after Shield’s title victory. “I'm focusing so much on my own thing and my own team that I'm playing with. Obviously, she's my best friend and I've played with her for like all the years and I love playing with her, I wouldn't change that for the world, but it's a lot of fun to get into this other team dynamic and to try and get things going.

“We knew from the beginning that we had five great women players on the team and it was just a matter of how to get along and how to communicate and to get it all glued together, and I think we did that really well.”

Knochenhauer became the co-holder of the “most decorated Olympic curler” title (shared with Oskar Eriksson) when she captured her fourth career medal, a second gold, in Milano Cortina.

Now she’s the co-holder of the “most decorated Rock League curler” title (shared with nine others, of course).

“It's been a great beginning to this year,” she said with a smile. “It's so much fun to play. We had a really fun week with the team here.”

‍FIFTH END: The feel-good story of the week has to be runner-up Typhoon Curling Club. Here’s a franchise with players from six different nations (seven when you include the general manager), coming together to reach the final and one shot away from winning the title.

Credit to GM J.D. Lind and the players for acknowledging that it would be a challenge but facing it head-on and buying into the concept.

Edin barely missed a beat, arriving straight from Ogden, Utah, where he captured his record-extending eighth gold medal as a skip at the World Men’s Curling Championship. Hasselborg was still in Olympic form and overcame early struggles with her team to click at the right time. Tori Koana and Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi were a dynamic duo in mixed doubles. At the heart of it all was captain Chinami Yoshida, whose positive personality kept the good vibes rolling.

"I know our group coming into this, everyone was a little unsure of how it was going to go, how things are going to be with such a diverse group of players, and I'm very proud of all of them," Lind said. "I think the reason why it went so well was just all of them really buying in, supporting each other and playing well this week."

SIXTH END: Growing pains were expected for all franchises, and it’s unfortunate for Maple United and Frontier Curling Club that they didn’t start firing on all cylinders until it was too late.

Maple shook off a 3-0 sweep from Shield in Friday’s round-robin finale to complete its own 2-0 shutout during the rematch in Saturday’s mixed fours stage. Mike McEwen was back in his natural habitat throwing last, after skipping from the lead position on the men’s team, and formed quite the lineup with third Xenia Schwaller, second Tanner Horgan and lead Karlee Burgess.

“We were pretty down (Friday) night, but I felt the energy with my team,” McEwen said following the mixed fours blanking. “I think a sheet over, the same thing. We were firing and just the mood was a complete flip today. Yeah, wow, what a turnaround, and that was fun. That's going to be one of the highlights of my year playing that game. That was really fun.

“Put it this way, at what point can you say, hey, I just played with the current world champion (Schwaller) and Canadian champion (Burgess) ladies on my mixed team. Like, when does that happen?”

The 45-year-old McEwen believes the last time he played mixed fours was when he won the Manitoba provincial title in 2003. Schwaller, who was born in September 2002, was just a baby then.

“It's been a while since I played mixed fours. That was really enjoyable,” said McEwen, who credited GM Glenn Howard for putting together, “a great team, great dynamics, great shooters, just it all came together.”

Meanwhile, Frontier had to make do for a few matches without women’s skip Stefania Constantini, who had to return home to Italy mid-event due to a prior commitment. Constantini came back Friday in time for the franchise’s match against Northern United and looked like she didn’t just make a back-and-forth transatlantic trek.

Constantini was sensational, drawing to the button for the two-point bonus in the seventh end to score four and tie the game, then defeated Italian teammate Giulia Zardini Lacedelli in the shootout to help Frontier win the game and the match to stave off elimination.

“What is jet-lag anyways,” Frontier captain Korey Dropkin said. “She's been through the wringer going back and forth from here to back home and coming out and playing a game like that, making some huge draws to end the game. That's what it's all about.”

It was also fun to see franchises embracing their unique identities, particularly Northern United as its players would perform a group wolf howl before every match and after every win.

SEVENTH END: The shot of the Rock League season happened in the very first match of the season.

Carole Howald set the bar high with an insane shot in Shield Curling Club’s mixed doubles game against Alpine Curling Club during Monday's opener.

Tied 3-3 in the sixth end, Shield had one stone in the four-foot circle surrounded by a cluster of Alpine granite. Howald’s shooter somehow nudged the pile at the perfect spot to bump her team’s stone up and in for shot rock. This should be in a physics textbook.

‍EIGHTH END: That’s a wrap on our 2025-26 season. Here’s what’s on tap from The Curling Group for 2026-27.

Grand Slam of Curling schedule

GSOC Invitational: Oct. 13-18, 2026; Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, Victoria, BC
GSOC Masters: Nov. 3-8, 2026; Co-op Place, Medicine Hat, AB
GSOC National: Nov. 17-22, 2026; Centre 200, Sydney, NS
GSOC Open: Dec. 1-6, 2026; Fort William Gardens, Thunder Bay, ON
GSOC Players’ Cup: Dec. 15-20, 2026; Slush Puppie Place, Kingston, ON

Early bird tickets are now available at GSOCtickets.com.

Rock League schedule