Team Canada works overtime for win at world men’s championship

LAS VEGAS — Team Canada’s first morning game at the 2018 361° World Men’s Curling Championship, presented by Ford of Canada, nearly spilled into the afternoon.

Brad Gushue and his St. John’s team picked up an extra-end win over South Korea on Tuesday morning. (Photo, World Curling Federation/Richard Gray)

But in the end, it was Canadian skip Brad Gushue sealing his team’s third straight victory at Orleans Arena on Tuesday morning, drawing to the four-foot for the winning point in an extra end for a 7-6 triumph over South Korea’s Chang-Min Kim.

With the victory, Gushue and his St. John’s team — vice-skip Mark Nichols, second Brett Gallant, lead Geoff Walker, alternate Tom Sallows, team coach Jules Owchar and national coach Rick Lang — improved to 4-1 and tied for second place in the 13-team round-robin standings with Norway’s Steffen Walstad and Scotland’s Bruce Mouat. Sweden’s Niklas Edin is setting the pace at 5-0.

“It’s getting better, for sure. We still have a ways to go, but certainly I like the progression over the last couple games,” said Gushue, whose team is seeking a second straight world men’s gold medal. “Even though it was a real tight game, they’re a tough team. They played really well against us and pushed us right to the limit, and fortunately we were able to make that draw to the four-foot.”

Canada had another fast start; despite not having last-rock advantage to open the game, the Canadians were able to jump into a 3-0 lead thanks to a stolen single in the second end and a theft of two more in the fourth.

But South Korea (3-3) hung tough and fought back to force the extra end with deuces in the fifth, eighth and 10th ends.

In the end, though, Gushue’s team played a near-perfect 11th to leave him the open draw to the four-foot.

Team Canada’s Brett Gallant (arm raised) and Geoff Walker acknowledge Brad Gushue’s game-winning draw in the 11th end. (Photo, World Curling Federation/Richard Gray

“It seemed like it was just one missed shot in the three ends where we gave up the deuces,” said Gushue. “Outside of that, I thought we played really well. Still a couple of wrong-side misses, which we need to clean up, but definitely our best game so far, I felt. Overall, pretty good, but I certainly think we can bring it up to another level.”

Team Canada is back on the ice Tuesday against Japan’s Go Aoki (1-4) at 4:30 p.m. ET.

In other Tuesday morning games, Russia’s Alexey Timofeev shaded Japan 6-5; Scotland was a 9-4 winner over Germany (which had former Canadian junior champ Ryan Sherrard skipping in place of Alexander Baumann); and Switzerland’s  Marc Pfister (2-3) edged Joel Retornaz of Italy (1-4) 6-5.

All of Canada’s 12 round-robin games are being broadcast by TSN. Go to www.tsn.ca/2017-18-curling-broadcast-schedule-1.593081 to see the broadcast schedule.

For Team Canada updates, go to www.curling.ca. Follow us on Twitter, @curlingcanada. 

For live scoring, standings and team lineups from the 2018 361° World Men’s Curling Championship, presented by Ford of Canada, go to www.worldcurling.org/wmcc2018

The French version of this story will be posted as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/?lang=fr