What to watch in Friday's matches at Rock League

It's Day 5 of Rock League's inaugural season, and we're down to the final day of round-robin play. Here's a look ahead at Friday's matches.

Frontier Curling Club vs. Northern United, Noon ET

Now this is a rivalry match! Grant Hardie vs. Bruce Mouat. Stefania Constantini vs. Giulia Zardini Lacedelli. Jokes aside as teammates collide, the match does feature an Olympic final rematch in mixed doubles between silver medallists Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin vs. gold medallists Isabella and Rasmus Wranå. We thank the GMs for rearranging their lineups to make that happen.

After getting swept by Alpine Curling Club on Wednesday, Northern United pulled off a clean sweep of its own Thursday to defeat Typhoon Curling Club. Northern (second place, 3-1 record, 3.5 points) looks to secure one of the top seeds for Saturday's mixed fours round. The European-based club may need to turn up the jets and score more total points across its games as it is tied for fourth in the potential tiebreaker category. Northern's 72 points are seven back of league-leader Alpine.

Frontier (sixth place, 1-3 record, 1 point) is still looking to get out of the basement and is also in last place in total points scored with 60. Although Frontier lost Thursday's match to Shield, the mixed doubles team of Taylor Anderson-Heide and Dropkin picked up a win in their game. Anderson-Heide drew for a piece of the button in the shootout to secure the victory.

Guess who's back? Constantini was away for the past three days due to a prior commitment and returns to skip Frontier's women's team against tour teammate Zardini Lacedelli, who will skip Northern women's team while Wranå joins her brother for mixed doubles.

Hardie will helm Frontier's men's team, going head-to-head against his tour skip Mouat. Don't forget Hardie used to skip before he joined Team Mouat in 2017.

Alpine Curling Club vs. Typhoon Curling Club, 3:30 p.m. ET

Europe is on fire, indeed. Alpine (first place, 3-1 record, 3.5 points) tops the table and also leads in the total points scored category at 79. The men's team, skipped by Joël Retornaz, is leading the charge with three straight wins and reached double-digits in its 10-6 victory over Maple United on Thursday.

The women's team, with captain Alina Pätz handling the reins, has had some slow starts but strong finishes in its games.

Typhoon (fourth place, 2-2 record, 2 points) will look to regroup from the 3-0 shutout loss to Northern. Women's skip Anna Hasselborg almost denied the sweep, pushing her game against Wranå to a shootout, but needed to cover the pinhole and came up just short.

No changes for Alpine's lineup, but Typhoon has made one adjustment, with captain Chinami Yoshida now throwing second and Min-ji Kim at third on the women's team. Yoshida will continue to handle vice skip duties.

Maple United vs. Shield Curling Club, 7 p.m. ET

The two Canadian-based clubs collide and what feels like a make-or-break match for Maple (fifth place, 1-3 record, 1 point). Changing up the mixed doubles lineup, with Tanner Horgan now playing with Jocelyn Peterman, led to an 11-6 win over Alpine but inconsistency continues to be an issue for the men's and women's teams.

Maple GM Glenn Howard has shuffled things on the men's team to a more traditional order. Fourth Ross Whyte will now call the game with previous skip Mike McEwen moving up from lead to third/vice skip. Brett Gallant shifts to second and Colton Flasch to lead.

Shield Curling Club (third place, 2-2 record, 2 points) was trending in the wrong direction with back-to-back losses, but reversed course with a win over Frontier. The women's team, skipped by Kerri Einarson, raced out of the gate with a three-ender in the first then stole four points over the following three ends for a huge 7-0 advantage, leading to a 10-1 rout. Captain Brad Jacobs also had a strong start on the men's side, as the two-time Olympic gold medallist made the perfect split on his guard in the second end to score four, going on to win 7-6.

Amos Mosaner returns to third on the men's team, with Jake Horgan at second and Dan Marsh at lead.