“It’s definitely going to be special to get a chance to go back (to the Olympics) and see what we can do and see if we can’t win another gold,” Shuster said. “I’m sure, now that we’re going back, there’s going to be a little bit of a target that other countries are going to put on us.”
Shuster said that Team Dropkin pushed his team and required it to strategize more than most other teams had.
“I’ve never thought more about how we needed to execute a game plan to counter someone else’s game plan,” he said. “We know exactly the way that they play, and the way they play is pretty relentless. You’re probably never going to get a chance at a big scoring end, and you’re going to have to play a low-scoring game. … I spent a long time thinking about the best way to counteract the way that they play because they just do it so well.”
Team Dropkin’s third, Joe Polo, took out two of Team Shuster’s stones with his final rock in the sixth end. Plys followed by removing two of Team Dropkin’s stones. After Dropkin’s first shot, Shuster took out two more of Team Dropkin’s stones. Dropkin tried with his final stone to set up a difficult shot for Shuster, but his stone did not curl as much as he wanted.
“I was trying to come in T-line, back-four buried so they would either be forced to make a tough draw for one or see if they had the confidence of making a short runback, making that tough for them so that if they did miss that, there was a potential steal of one or even two on the board,” he said.
