Women's world championship takeaways: Blowouts rule the day

Unlike the past two months of curling, where there has been non-stop drama, Wednesday’s action at the women’s world curling championship in Calgary was anything but that. 

In only three of the 12 games played on Wednesday was the score within two points or less.

One of those three games was Canada versus Scotland. Einarson’s Canadian rink pulled out the 7-5 victory in their evening draw to improve their record to 7-1. They also picked up a 9-3 win against Turkey earlier in the day.

Against Scotland, Canada jumped out to a 4-1 lead after three great ends. They converted both of their hammers into deuces while forcing Scotland to just take one. 

But in the middle of the game, they let the Scottish team get back into the match, and it wasn’t until Canada ran Scotland out of rocks that the win felt certain. 

“I think we just lost control a little bit in the middle ends there,” second Shannon Birchard said in a post-game interview.

“I thought we started really strong, and I thought we finished fairly strong as well. We just didn’t take full advantage of our opportunities up the middle ends there and let them back in the game a little bit.”

Despite most games on Wednesday being blowouts, there is still a lot to discuss. So, here are the takeaways as we near the end of round-robin play. 

Cracks showing in Canada’s shield 

Even though Canada is all but guaranteed a playoff spot in this year’s world championship after their two wins on Wednesday, we’re starting to see cracks in their game that give reason for concern.

It’s not because of lead Karlee Burgess or Birchard, though. Those two have been outstanding throughout all eight of Canada’s games. Instead, it’s Einarson and third Val Sweeting.

During Einarson’s first four games of the week, she was first amongst skips curling 88 per cent, but ever since then, she’s down at 72 per cent. Sweeting is in the same camp. She shot an average of 83 in her first four games, compared to 77.8 in her last four.

The biggest difference for Einarson and Sweeting in the last four games has been the kick speed/weight they're throwing.

At certain points in Einarson’s career when she was going through a funk, she always missed a tad heavy, and that seems to be the case right now as well. She has mentioned multiple times on mics picked up by the broadcast that she feels like her weight is good, but the stone sails a couple of feet too far. 

For Sweeting, it’s mostly been the same thing that has caused her numbers to drop. Just a little bit heavier weight than what was called, which is leading the rock to run straighter, and since the broom was placed for the original weight call, it’s causing them to miss some shots. 

A prime example is when Sweeting flashed two double takeouts in the fifth end against Scotland.

For the first time all week, you could tell this was rattling them. It affected their confidence, which led Scotland to get into the game. 

Since the team was understanding the ice better than anyone earlier in the week, it’s a little strange to see them lose this much grip on everything. 

Maybe a little bit of it has to do with stones being sharpened after Tuesday’s games — something that happens once a tournament during the middle of the event.

Birchard even noticed the team was struggling, but thinks that with a day's worth of play, the squad should be better tomorrow. 

“Hopefully we can get a little bit better handle on speed, rocks, everything that’s going on out there,” Birchard said. “I think with (the ice crew) touching up the rocks last night, it was just a little bit of a learning curve today, and so hopefully it’s feeling a little easier for us to judge and get our kick speed down.” 

China gets back to .500

After starting 1-3, China’s Team Wang Rui has battled back to 4-4 and is firmly in the playoff race. A major reason for their record improving was because their fourth-stone thrower, Han Yu, had back-to-back games over 95 per cent.

However, in their game against Sweden on Wednesday morning, Yu fell and hurt her knee. She stayed in the game but shot just 51 per cent during the loss. 

She was in too much pain to play the evening draw and sat out to rest her knee. Without her, though, the team stepped up and delivered a great performance, curling 91 per cent to earn an 8-2 victory over Australia. 

Per The Curling Group’s John Cullen, the team is hopeful that Yu will be back in the lineup on Thursday.

Wrana too inconsistent for Sweden 

Even though Sweden is now 6-3 after Wednesday's games and is in decent play to make the playoffs, Isabella Wrana’s play this week has been too inconsistent. If the Swedes were to make the elimination round, it’s hard to see them actually doing anything because of this. 

Since Wrana’s second game of the week, there has been a trend in her play — at least percentage-wise. Her stats improve, just to go back down in the next game.

None bigger than on Wednesday, though.

In the morning draw, Wrana played 81 per cent to help her team beat China 9-4, while in the evening draw, she shot just 31 (!) per cent in the team's 8-2 defeat versus Japan. The worst performance by any skip this week by a large margin. 

She now ranks 10th out of the 13 skips competing this week. The three skips below her have a combined record of 5-21.