Scotland’s most successful ever skip has hailed Team Mouat’s victory in one of Canada’s Grand Slam tournaments as “exceptional” and “incredible”.

The two time world champion who led his team to an OIympic silver medal in Sochi three years ago, has been working with the quartet of Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan alongside their team coach Alan Hannah since they were put together at the beginning of this season and was with them in Ontario as they won The Boost National.

It was their first Slam as a team, just Mouat’s second ever and he became the youngest skip ever to win one of these events, beating three of the world’s top six rinks, Canada’s Teams Jacobs, Koe and McEwen on the way.

In the final they met Team Kim, by a strange coincidence the same opponents they had beaten in winning two lower grade Canadian events earlier in the season and they were once again too powerful for the Koreans.

“Being honest it’s just unprecedented for a team to go over there, that young, to a Slam event like that with such a high calibre field before the Canadian Olympic trials and put on a display of curling like that,” said Murdoch.

“It was quite simply exceptional. They played great games, really believed in themselves and never doubted their ability.

Ironically, Mouat re-shuffled his line-up after losing to Murdoch’s team in the Scottish Championship earlier this year, the veteran moving into coaching after announcing his retirement when he failed to earn qualification for next year’s Winter Olympics which means he will not be representing Team GB for the first time since 2002.

Murdoch, whose wife is Canadian, has been travelling regularly back and forward across the Atlantic for the past two decades, allowing him to place what he witnessed in perspective and he could not have been more impressed.

“I’ve not seen curling like that from a young team in Canada before. Some of the shots Bruce was brave enough to call and then make were just quite incredible. He’s a cool cookie,” said Murdoch.

Mouat explained that taking the scalp of the reigning Olympic champion in front of a passionate support in a tie-break match, had given them the belief to go the distance, subsequent victories over Kevin Koe’s 2016 world champions and Team McEwen who are also in the world’s top six, had seen them make a major impact.

“We played Brad Jacobs in his home town and after that we knew we weren’t going to face a bigger game than that and after that we knew we could beat any of those teams,” he said.

“I think we probably turned a few more heads on this trip than the last one, but three titles in Canada’s an amazing achievement for any team never mind one that’s a new team this season.”

Mouat is now hoping to be invited to another at the Canadian Open next year, but his big target is to win the Scottish Championships and earn a play-off meeting with British Curling’s Olympic representatives led by Kyle Smith for the right to go to the World Championships.

“We’re all for Kyle doing great at the Euros and bringing back a medal for Scotland, but we’ll be looking to get the Scotland tops on our backs when those play-offs come round,” he said.

Smith’s team are currently competing at the European Championships where they recovered from losing their first match of the tournament to Germany by cruising to an 8-1 victory over Slovakia, while Eve Muirhead’s rink made it four victories in a row in the women’s competition, beating Italy 8-1 and Germany 8-5.