Fight for play-off spots continues in Schaffhausen

With Sweden winning twice on Wednesday, they sit on the verge of play-off qualification, unbeaten on eight wins at the top of the table, leaving the other teams at the LGT World Men’s Championship looking anxiously at the other five available play-off slots.

And the teams who might have the best reason to be anxious are Norway and United States – who share seventh place on the table, just outside the magic top six, and both with work to do if they are to reach the play-offs.

In Wednesday’s play, they both had just one game. Norway were up against Korea and went into the sixth end trailing by 2-4. In that end, Norway skip Magnus Ramsjfell brought his last stone through the narrowest of gaps among front guards to score two and level the game at 4-4.

By the tenth end, Norway led by 7-5, but Korea’s skip Park Jongduk successfully played a draw to score two, level the game at 7-7 and force an extra end.

Team Korea © World Curling / Céline Stucki

In that extra end, Norway scored the one point needed to give them an 8-7 win.

Meanwhile, United States played Japan. In the eighth end, with the game tied at 4-4 Japan’s fourth player Shimizu Tetsuro played a double take-out to score two and take a 6-4 lead.

In the ninth end, American skip John Shuster attempted a double take-out, but could only score one point instead of the two he was looking for, to leave Japan with a 6-5 lead. Japan eventually won by 6-5.

Team Japan celebrate their win over United States © World Curling / Céline Stucki

Both Norway and United States have four games left to keep their qualification hopes alive.

The qualification set-up will see the teams ranked top and second proceed directly to the semi-finals while, for teams ranked third to sixth, qualification games will take place. The third-ranked team will be playing the sixth-ranked team, and the fourth- and fifth-ranked teams will play each other. The winners of these qualification games will proceed to the semi-finals.

Above the battling Norway and United States, unbeaten Sweden had two wins on Wednesday. After their 7-5 win over Italy, skip Niklas Edin said, “I felt pretty comfortable all game and we controlled it. They are such a good team, especially at generating points when they need to, so it was a fight until the end, but I thought we played a really solid game there.”

Sweden’s later 8-5 win over Germany keeps them in top spot and behind them are Canada on seven wins. They beat Netherlands by 7-4 in the morning before coming back to beat Korea by 7-4.

Netherlands versus Canada © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

After the game against Korea, Canada skip Brad Gushue said, “That was OK. It was tough out there with the frost, but we managed it pretty well. We got up early and controlled the game after that. We knew they could play – they’re just not having a good week. We knew they were capable of a good game, so we just had to make sure we were good.”

Scotland and Switzerland now share third place – the Scots beat Czechia by 6-3 and then Japan by 7-5 on Wednesday, while Switzerland followed up an early 8-3 win over New Zealand with a 7-4 win over Czechia.

Despite their evening loss to Sweden, Germany sit in fifth place, while Italy, having beaten Netherlands by 8-5 in the afternoon, hold the vital sixth place on the rankings.