Gushue Battles Edin in Third World Shootout
The third time is the charm for Canada’s Brad Gushue and Sweden’s Niklas Edin.
The Canadian and Swedish teams will meet in Sunday night’s final of the 2022 world men’s championship, the third such meeting in the past five seasons.
Gushue defeated Edin 4-2 in the 2017 final at Edmonton, Alta. and Edin won the 2018 rematch 7-3 at this year’s venue, the Orleans arena/hotel/casino in Las Vegas, NV.
Gushue holds a career 21-10 won/loss record over Edin, but has lost three consecutive matchups—two games at the Beijing Olympics, including a devastating loss in the semifinal, and the round-robin battle earlier this week in Vegas.
Alina Pavlyuchik-WCF
Edin, Oskar Eriksson, Rasmus Wrana and Christoffer Sundgren are the Olympic champions and also the three-time defending world title holders. Edin himself holds five world championship titles.
“A sixth gold medal would mean a lot, particularly this season with Olympic gold,” said Edin. “I think that we’re better than ever and if we win this one too, we would be satisfied with this whole Olympic cycle.”
The Swedes finished second in the round robin behind Canada, and dispatched Italy’s Joel Retornaz 8-4 in Saturday night’s semifinals. Sweden led 3-1 in the fifth end when Edin made a long and wide runback to spill a well-guarded Italian counter and score four points.
Gushue, Mark Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker met United States in their semifinal and held a 5-2 lead after six ends. In the ninth, U.S. skip Korey Dropkin scored two after an umpire’s measurement but couldn’t get shot stone coming home, and Canada won 8-5.
Alina Pavlyuchik-WCF
“It was an ugly game in a week of ugly games,” said Gushue. “On that sheet there’s two scraper marks right down the four-foot path, and it made
it really difficult on some of those in-between shots, and even the draws.
“I think both teams struggled with it to be honest, and (I’m) fortunate I didn’t have to throw my last rock because I would’ve had to go down one of those paths.”
Team Gushue is 50-10 on the season, while Team Edin are 55-19.
“(Sweden) are playing well. They’re made for this event. They get to come here every year and enjoy it and play well. So, it’s going to be a battle. The benefit that we have over playing them the last few times is that we have hammer to start.”
Italy and USA advanced to the semis after winning playoff qualification matches on Saturday morning. Retornaz defeated Yannick Schwaller’s Switzerland outfit by a 10-4 count while Dropkin handled Scotland’s Ross Paterson 6-4.
Italy and USA will battle for bronze Sunday at 2:00 p.m. ET while the gold medal final takes place at 7:00 p.m. ET.
The final will mark the last tilt between these particular eight curling athletes at the world championship. Last month, Team Gushue announced that Brett Gallant would be leaving the team after the season’s conclusion.
