Brittany Spencer

Some of Canada's best curlers are in Summerside, P.E.I., for one final run at the Olympic curling trials.

4 more teams added to pre-Olympic curling trials

Curling Canada has announced a four-team expansion for the 2017 pre-Olympic curling trials in Summerside, P.E.I., this November.

Based on his rink's performance on the 2016-17 Canadian Team Ranking System, Nova Scotia's Jamie Murphy has qualified for the Road to the Roar.

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The Home Hardware Road to the Roar began&nbsp;Monday afternoon at Credit Union Place with draws at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.

There will be four draws a day from Tuesday to Friday with the playoffs scheduled for the weekend.

The final four slots in the Olympic trials will go to the top two female and males teams.

14 of the top women’s teams and 14 of the top men’s teams are competing in the Road to the Roar.

road to roar

It's a talented field including two Olympic medalists: John Morris and Shannon Kleibrink. Four-time world champion Glenn Howard also has a team, as does back-to-back world junior champion Kelsey Roque.

Charlottetown's&nbsp;Robbie&nbsp;Doherty will be an alternate on the Greg&nbsp;Balsdon&nbsp;team from Kingston, Ont.

Is Canada's next Olympic curling champion at the pre-trials?

How deep is the talent pool in Canadian curling? Put it this way: we need a separate tournament just to decide who gets to play in our Olympic trials. That's what 28 teams will be doing this week in Summerside, P.E.I., as they look to follow in the footsteps of 2014 Olympic champ Brad Jacobs.

British Columbia skip John Morris works on a rock in a 4-2 losing efffort to Quebec in draw 9 action at the Tim Hortons Brier curling championship at Mile One Centre in St. John's on Tuesday, March 7, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

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John Morris, who won Olympic gold in 2010 as the third on Kevin Martin's team, is now trying to skip his own rink to the Games via the Canadian pre-trials.

Seven Mile Bay's own Adam Casey will be skipping the team he played with out of Regina last year.

Casey said he loves any chance to get to play in front of his home crowd.&nbsp;

"I know we're from Saskatchewan on paper," he said,&nbsp;"but I think we'll have the P.E.I. crowd behind us."

Casey's first game is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Two years of planning went into bringing The Road to the Roar event to the City of&nbsp;Summerside with&nbsp;more than 120 volunteers helping out with this week's activities.

Summerside receives $30K to promote city as sport destination

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the government of P.E.I. are providing $15,000 each to the City of Summerside to showcase the city as "a premier sport tourism destination," according to a government news release.

Skip John Morris is among the dozens of curlers competing in Road to the Roar curling pre-trials hosted in Summerside starting on Nov. 6.

"When you drop 20&nbsp;plus teams of some fairly big name curlers into&nbsp;our community, you can feel it," said&nbsp;JP&nbsp;Desrosiers, Community Service Director for the City of&nbsp;Summerside.

"You can see the event vehicles driving around town, you can see the satellite trucks rolling into the city, there's certainly a&nbsp;buzz."

Everything will lead to Ottawa next month where the best teams in the country will compete for two spots at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyongyang, South Korea.   

road to roar 

Al Cameron, Director of Communications and Media with Curl Canada, said every competitor has spent the last two years working to qualify for this process.

"Right now all 14 men's and 14 women's teams are right on the doorstep and trust me, there's vision of gold medals dancing in their heads," he said.

The teams that will be advancing to Ottawa next month will be announced on Sunday.&nbsp;

P.E.I.'s Adam Casey will skip the team he has been playing with in Regina.

Road to the Roar last shot at Olympic trials

'There's certainly a buzz'

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