Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look back at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list ...
Niklas Edin has Canada’s number.
The Swedish skip won his seventh world men’s curling championship Sunday, beating Canada’s Brad Gushue 6-5 in the gold-medal game in Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
Edin has won the world title in 2013, ’15, ’18, ’19, ’21, ’22 and 2024. In five of those years, Edin has beaten a Canadian team in the final (2013, ’18, ’19, ’22 and ’24) — and three of those victories have come over Gushue (2018, ’22 and ’24).
The last time Gushue won gold at the world championship was 2017, when he defeated Edin in the final. Gushue, a product of St. John’s, N.L., also earned a silver medal in ’23 following a loss to Scotland’s Bruce Mouat in the championship game.
Gushue and his team of Mark Nichols, E.J. Harnden and Geoff Walker were trying to help Canada become the first country since 2017 to win both men’s and women’s world titles in the same year. That year, Rachel Homan and Gushue completed the double for Canada.
Homan claimed the 2024 world women’s championship on March 24 in Sydney, N.S.
The men’s final Sunday featured the teams who finished first (Sweden) and second (Canada) in the round-robin portion of the tournament.
After a blank in the first end, the Swedes scored two in the second. They stretched their lead with a steal of one in the third, when Gushue clipped a guard while trying to remove a Swedish stone for a blank.
But the Canadian skip was right on the money in the fourth, hitting for two to cut the deficit to 3-2.
The fifth was blanked, and that was followed by three straight forces that left Sweden with a 5-3 lead after eight.
Gushue tied the contest with a deuce in the ninth and he had three counters in the 10th as he tried for the steal. But Edin made a perfect draw to the four-foot with his last rock for the deciding point.
🇸🇪 WORLD CHAMPIONS 🇸🇪
Congratulations to Sweden who win gold! 👏🏆#WMCC #Curling pic.twitter.com/SLSHdyLeD6
— World Curling (@worldcurling) April 7, 2024
The 2025 world men’s curling championship is to be held at the Moose Jaw Events Centre from March 29 through April 6.
