Play-off field complete in Schaffhausen

After 20 sessions of round-robin play, the play-off scenario at the LGT World Men’s Championship has now been set.

Sweden finished off their round-robin programme with an 11th win over Korea (7-4) in the afternoon before picking up their only loss by 6-8 against defending champions Scotland, with skip Niklas Edin sitting that game out.

Despite this loss, the Swedes take the coveted top spot, going straight to the semi-finals and having last-stone advantage all the way now.

Team Sweden in their game against Korea © World Curling / Céline Stucki

Despite this win over Sweden, the Scots, who earlier beat Norway by 9-8 after an extra end, finished third overall, missing out on the direct route to the semi-finals. Despite that they share the same won ten lost two record as Canada, the Scots lost out in the head-to-head game earlier in the week.

Scotland now face sixth-placed United States in the qualification games. To make their way to the qualification round, the Americans beat New Zealand by 10-4 on Friday morning, and followed that up with a 6-3 victory over Czechia on Friday afternoon.

After his win over Czechia, American skip John Shuster said, “We played a great round-robin as a team. We were probably an inch away from being 10-2, but it was nice to finish really strong.”

United States third Chris Plys © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Canada beat Japan by 9-3 and then Switzerland by 8-1 in Friday’s play, to finish in second place and take the other direct semi-final slot.

Team Japan © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Meanwhile, Germany beat Italy by 8-7 on Friday morning, to keep their play-off hopes alive. Then, silencing a packed home crowd, the Germans beat Switzerland by 7-6 in the afternoon, when Switzerland’s fourth player Benoit Schwarz-van Berkel was just a bit heavy with his final draw, to give Germany a stolen win. This gave the Germans fourth place on the rankings and eliminated the hosts.

After this win, German skip Marc Muskatewitz said, “That was a really good game from both sides and yes, that was really nice.” And speaking about his own last stone in the game, to put pressure on the Swiss he said, “It was all or nothing…go through the routine, play the rock like I’ve played it before and give it to the sweepers and to the skip.”

Felix Messenzehl celebrates their play-off qualification © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Looking forward when asked about who he would like to play as his qualification game opponents, Muskatewitz said, “We want to play against everyone! Everyone is really good here. We’re just happy to be still in.”

As it happens, Germany’s opponents will be fifth-placed Italy, who recovered from their earlier loss against Germany by beating Norway 8-2 in the final round-robin session.

Friday’s Italy vs Germany pairing will be repeated in Saturday’s qualification game © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Behind the top six play-off qualifiers, Switzerland finished in seventh place, Netherlands were eighth, Czechia were ninth, Norway finished tenth, Japan were 11th, Korea finished 12th overall, and New Zealand were 13th.

Sweden will face the winner of Germany versus Italy in the semi-final round, while Canada will face the winner of Scotland versus United States, with all these games taking place on Saturday.

The qualification games will take place at 10:00, the semi-finals start at 16:00 (CEST).

Click here for the standings after day seven.

Click here for all the results and the playing schedule.

For information about streaming, click here.

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