Brier champion skip Brendan Bottcher weighs in on surprise split with vice-skip Darren Moulding

Bottcher apologized Sunday afternoon for the statement's wording during a solo media availability on a Curling Canada Zoom call.

Brendan Bottcher provided his reasoning Sunday for the lineup rupture within the Canadian men’s curling champions that left Darren Moulding on the outs and had the sport’s observers engrossed by the unexpected divorce just three months before the Tim Hortons Brier.

“Chemistry is a tough one,” Bottcher said. “It really is.”

An in-person meeting Friday night in Edmonton was followed by an online Team Bottcher statement announcing Moulding’s departure, which came a week after the rink’s disappointing performance at Canada’s Olympic curling trials.

The post included a line that Moulding was “taking time away from the game for personal reasons,” something the veteran third described on Twitter as a “complete BS statement.”

READ MORE: Vice-skip Darren Moulding leaves Brendan Bottcher’s curling rink

Bottcher apologized Sunday afternoon for the statement’s wording during a solo media availability on a Curling Canada Zoom call, stating that while he felt the line was somewhat misinterpreted, he regretted any confusion it may have caused.

“It was never my intent to shepherd him down a certain path or push him out of the sport,” Bottcher said. “I hope he keeps curling. I want to be very direct about that.”

While Moulding pulled back the curtain on what he felt led to the split with heart-on-his-sleeve style comments a day earlier, Bottcher declined to get “into the minutia” of either their sit-down session or the team’s dynamics.