Brendan Bottcher

“The gap between junior curling and men's curling is just huge.”

“The Canadian teams just have great training and great coaches and that's sort of why there's the expectation that they're going to win. But there's a lot of really good teams coming out of the European countries.”

“I did a four-year degree in five years. I have awesome support from my team and my professors. Everyone's super on board and that makes my life a bit easier.”

“I'm just fortunate I can compete with a lot of these guys that have been doing this on an elite level for 15, 20 years. I think it's just amazing we're even in the mix.”

“It's really nice to look around the other top skips in curling and know that I'm six, eight, 10 years younger than some of them. That is good on the ego.”

“If you can act calm, that's step one in trying to convince yourself to be calm.”

“Well, I do get amped up - maybe I'm just not outwardly as out there as some of the other guys would be.”

“That quiet intensity really brings a lot of confidence to your team and I think intimidates a lot of other teams.”

“I try to live my life that way - there's not a whole lot of point getting worked up about things you can't control, and especially a week like this. You play 150 ends of curling, there's going to be a lot of bad that happens in there.”

“I don't think it's bold to say we wanna win and I don't have a hard time saying that.”

“You need all four people to be throwing well. You need to be playing the right shots. You just need to be a lot smarter.”

“If I can add a bit of a calming influence on the guys, then I'll certainly try to.”