Three teams secure play-off spots at World Men’s

The weekend play-off picture started to take shape during Thursday’s second-last day of round-robin play at the LGT World Men’s Championship.

In the morning session, table-toppers Sweden beat United States by 6-4 while second-placed Canada were 7-4 winners over Norway. These results guaranteed qualification for the two leading teams.

Niklas Edin in their game against United States © World Curling / Céline Stucki

These morning wins did not guarantee either qualifier a place in the top two and a direct route to the semi-finals, as Swedish skip Niklas Edin was quick to acknowledge.

He said, “It’s such a big target to be one or two – you get straight to the semis, you get hammer. To win these championships you almost never do it through the qualification games. Play-offs is step one, but it’s always going to be getting the one-two spot, this is the first goal for us. We’re sitting really well for that.”

And his rival Brad Gushue from Canada was equally cautious, “Whoever finishes third through sixth is going to have a difficult time, so if we can avoid that, it would be great. We’re going to have to win a couple of more games before the end of the week.”

And their quest to make it to the one-two spots continued in the evening, when they faced each other.

In this game, Sweden scored three points in the second end to take a 3-0 lead and never looked back after that, winning by 6-5. It was a tenth win for Sweden that keeps them on top of the rankings, although not yet guaranteed top spot for the semi-finals.

Behind these top two teams, Scotland played twice on Thursday, beating Netherlands by 5-3 in the morning before coming back to beat Switzerland by 8-7 in an extra end.

Scotland versus Switzerland © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

These two wins mean that the Scots have also qualified for the play-offs. They are currently in joint second place on the table, while Switzerland now share fifth place with Germany, who lost their only game of the day by 2-10 to United States.

Italy had two wins on Thursday, beating New Zealand by 10-4 and then overcoming Switzerland by 6-5, thanks to a last-end single steal. These wins put them into fourth place on the rankings.

Italy versus Switzerland © World Curling / Céline Stucki

Further down the table, United States recovered from an early 4-6 loss to Sweden by beating Germany 10-2, and they lie in seventh place, still with a chance to reach the play-offs, although they need help from elsewhere. Below them Norway and Czechia have four wins, while Netherlands and Japan have three.

Czechia in their game against Norway © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Thursday afternoon’s session featured a remarkable game between Korea and Japan.

In the first end of this game, Korea’s skip Park Jongduk played a double take-out to score six points – the biggest single score of the event so far. By the tenth end, Japan had fought back and, in the tenth, with Korea still ahead by 10-8, Japan’s fourth player Shimizu Tetsuro played a soft tap to score two and level the game at 10-10, forcing an extra end. In that extra end, Park finally produced a draw for one point to win the game by 11-10, to record his team’s first win so far.

Korea came back onto the ice to face a New Zealand side still looking for their first win in the evening session and managed a second win by 5-2. This leaves New Zealand as the only team without a win so far.