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It would be a bit of a misnomer to lump in John Epping’s Toronto rink with all of the new teams that were assembled for this curling season.

After all, Epping linked up with Travis Fanset, Patrick Janssen and Tim March during the final stretch of last year for a trial run after the trio parted ways with their skip Mark Kean. Even though their future was still up in the air, the new team just happened to gel together rather quickly and reached the quarterfinals at the Grand Slam of Curling’s season-ending Players’ Championship tournament in Summerside, P.E.I.

“We thought we’d treat March and April as a lead-up to the Players’ and work hard as a full squad even though we really hadn’t confirmed anything,” Epping said. “So it was a great chance to practise together, get to know each other and then obviously get kind of a trial run to play in that spiel together. It worked out well and they decided to keep me on after P.E.I.”

“I think what was really key was practising those two months prior to the event,” Epping added. “At an event of that calibre you need to put the effort in. That was a big key into getting together and working hard together. Also the excitement of being a new team, first time trying together. That’s adds a lot of excitement to it as well.”

The 31-year-old Epping finds himself in the veteran’s seat on this team after years of learning from the game’s best. Epping played with 1998 Olympic silver medallist Mike Harris in 2007 before joining former world champions Wayne Middaugh, Jon Mead and Scott Bailey for a few seasons, earning his first Grand Slam title with the rink at the National in 2008.

Epping branched out to skip his own team in 2010, bringing along Bailey at third, and won his first Grand Slam as a skip at the 2012 Players’ Championship. Looking back, Epping said the experience of playing with Olympians and world champions was everything he could have dreamed of.

“To get the experience from them and show me different parts of the game, I would like to say I was spoiled getting to play with the best,” he said. “I always say Wayne Middaugh is the most talented player to ever play the game. So to have the opportunity to play with him and Scott Bailey, who is one of the best leads of all time and then even an easy role for him to play third for so many years. Then I played with Jon Mead as well and Mike Harris, one of the best strategists ever to play. So I was really, really spoiled in my 20s.”

As this past summer turned into a frenzy across the curling world with several teams disbanding following the end of an Olympic cycle, Epping’s new team already had a head start on the competition and their chemistry together has continued into this season.

So far the team sits third overall on the World Curling Tour’s year-to-date order of merit list and has reached the finals at two tournaments, the StuSells Oakville Tankard (Oakvile, Ont.) and the Point Optical Curling Classic (Saskatoon), but both times they ran into Team Mike McEwen from Winnipeg (No. 1 on the year-to-date list) and fell just short against the red-hot rink.

The team has one final tuneup this weekend at the Challenge Chateau Cartier de Gatineau before heading to Selkirk, Man., for the Masters — the opening stop of the Grand Slam of Curling series — and Epping already has the Masters on his mind.

“It was the first one on the schedule we marked down,” he said. “The Grand Slams have become this huge part of our season and you mark them off on the calendar. You really work hard to play well in them. They’re our majors, it’s huge for our sport and it’s huge for our team so we’re really excited. We wish it was now.”