Canada will win the bronze medal on home soil at the BKT World Men's Curling Championship at Temple Gardens Centre.
Skip Brad Jacobs, third Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant and lead Ben Hebert picked up an 11-2 win over China in the bronze medal game on Sunday morning.
"I think the reason why we were able to score so many points— not only did we get a bunch of misses, but we felt really comfortable on Sheet C all week. We loved that sheet. It felt really easy to put the broom down; it felt really easy to call line on that sheet," said Jacobs after the win.
"You don’t want to come away empty-handed in an event like this. We played far too well for that. It was great to pick up where we left off. We played a strong game this morning and, yeah, happy to be going home with the bronze medal," said Gallant.
"This isn’t a 'lose the semifinal at our nationals and come to the worlds every year.' That’s not what this is for us. This is a really hard tournament to get to for us. So, to come here and get a medal and get third, a little bit disappointing because we were playing good enough to get first," said Hebert, who is originally from Regina and has won a world championship medal in his home province.
"If we would have come here and weren’t playing good enough to win, when you don’t win, then you just say, 'Hey, that’s the way the week was going,' but we were playing good enough to win. We knew that; every team knew that. You guys all saw that. That was the disappointing part: we were playing good enough to win and we just came up a couple shots short."
"Curling Canada and our teams are learning that getting on the podium is important. Winning a medal is important. You win the last game of the week and you feel like you’ve accomplished something," said Kennedy.
"We had a tremendous week. We played unbelievably well. We played the No. 1 team in the world yesterday, playing at their best, and took them right to the wire. We’ve got nothing to hold our heads about, just super proud of the guys. We played amazing and we’re leaving here with big smiles on our faces."
With an empty house on his first rock, Jacobs made a split on his own guard to lay two. China skip Xiaoming Xu missed an open hit, giving Jacobs an open draw for three.
China blanked the second end to keep the hammer into the third. Facing a Chinese shot rock with his first, Jacobs tried a light run-back onto his own to remove the shot rock. It over-curling slightly left China laying one. Xu angled his own rock back to lay two with his first rock. That left Jacobs an easy double takeout to lay four without last rock. Xu drew in to score his one.
Facing three Canadian rocks in the fourth, Xu played a tap-back with his first rock, so Canada was laying two, but both rocks were at the back of the button. Jacobs made a light takeout with his first to lay four. Xu tried to come in off his own, but the rock over-curling. Jacobs made an open takeout for five to go up 8-1 after four ends.
Even with the lopsided score, at the world championships, teams must play eight ends during the playoffs.
Xu was facing three Canadian shot rocks in the fifth when his draw came up light for a steal of two, as Canada led 10-1 at the break.
In the sixth, Xu had an open hit to score one. Canada blanked the seventh. There was a bit of confusion in the eighth end. After China threw their first rock, they started to shake hands to end the game. However, officials had to step in to tell them they needed to complete the eighth end. Jacobs drew into the house for a point to make the final 11-2 for Canada.
"I knew we had to play eight, so when he turned around to shake hands, I didn’t really know what to do. I was shocked and I wasn’t surprised to see the officials intervene there. Obviously, in their minds, they were mathematically eliminated. You have to play eight ends; that’s the rule, I think, for TV. All good, I said to the skip, 'I’m good to hit this out if you are,' and they were. They were done," explained Jacobs.
The gold medal game takes place at 3 p.m. at Temple Gardens Centre, with Bruce Mouat's Scotland rink taking on Yannick Schwaller's Switzerland team.