Italy came oh so close

Brad Gushue and his teammates are one win away from capturing Canada’s first world championship gold medal since 2017.

Standing in the way is the Bruce Mouat foursome from Scotland, who earned Olympic silver to Gushue’s bronze last year in Beijing.

It’s a return to 1959’s original world championship series, when Canada’s Richardson brothers travelled to Scotland and the unknown in a two-nation challenge.

The Canadians scored a tremendous pair of playoff wins at TD Place in Ottawa on Saturday, first by crushing their chief international rival Niklas Edin of Sweden 9-1 before outshooting Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller 7-5 in the semifinal.

Meanwhile, the Scots needed all their shots to post a 9-8 extra-end semifinal win over a constantly-improving Italy, skipped by Joel Retornaz.

When Mouat jammed on his last stone of the 10th end, Retornaz was set to draw for two to force the extra. Instead, with just 12 seconds remaining on his shot clock, the Italian threw a long split attempt to try for three points and the win.

It went to an agonizing measurement, and the winning Italy stone was just a few millimetres away from counting.

Canada looked as solid as the 45-lb stones they were throwing against the Swiss.

“The way we’ve been playing all week, I’ll take it,” said Gushue.

“This hasn’t been our best but that may have been our best game all week as a team.

“To get to a final we’re pretty fortunate. We just have to go out and play like we did today.”

The Canadians have picked a good time to go on a blitz. They went 7-3—after a 2-2 start—in their first 10 round-robin games but have been on a tear since then, beating the Swedes twice and now the Swiss.

The Swedes are royalty in men’s curling and Switzerland finished on top of the round-robin standings with an 11-1 record.

But that was then, and this is now.

The win over the Swiss was particularly sweet for the Canadians. Gushue, Mark Nichols, E.J. Harnden and Geoff Walker were thumped badly by the Swiss in the opening game of the 13-team event.

Canada had scored an impressive 9-5 win over Sweden to conclude the round robin, before the 9-1 thrashing on Saturday.

“That was a little more lopsided than we anticipated,” said Gushue.

“We were making some more shots. They (Sweden) felt a bit of urgency to push a little harder than they needed to and created a few opportunities for us.”

It marked the first time since 2016 that Sweden had lost three games in a row at the world men’s championship.

“We can’t be too disappointed. We’ve had a few really good years,” said Edin, who was attempting to win a record fifth straight world title, and seventh in total.

“We played pretty well this week but the Switzerland game (on Friday morning), where we lost out of nowhere, kind of turned the tables a little bit.

“Rough last third of this event but I feel it could have been way different.”

In the other qualification game, Italy defeated Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell by an 8-4 count.

Switzerland and Italy will meet for the bronze medal on Sunday morning. Retornaz and Co. won their nation’s first -ever world men’s championship medal by taking bronze a year ago in Las Vegas.

“I was just praying,” said Mouat, who described his thoughts while watching the Italian stone measurement in the 10th end.

“Keeping everything crossed. I was just begging it was out.”

Mouat and his mates are attempting to win Scotland’s first world men’s gold since 2009 in Moncton, N.B. when David Murdoch triumphed over Canada’s Kevin Martin in that legendary “throwaway” match.

“It would mean a lot,” said Mouat.

“To see other Scottish teams do it … it’s filling us with encouragement, hope and belief that we can do it.”

The Canada-Scotland golden battle gets underway at 4:00 p.m. ET.