Curling worlds: Canada falls to Sweden in semifinal

Canada's Pat Simmons was hoping to have a chance to win his first world men's curling title in his home country.

A semifinal loss to Sweden's Niklas Edin dashed those plans Saturday night.

Simmons struggled from the start against the 2013 world champion and it proved costly. Edin's rink posted a 6-3 victory at Scotiabank Centre to earn a berth in the gold-medal game against Norway's Thomas Ulsrud.

Simmons will have to settle for an appearance in the bronze-medal game against Finland's Aku Kauste.

The Canadian skip flashed his final throw in the first end to give Sweden a steal of one. Simmons was heavy with his first rock in the second end before recovering to score a single.

Edin scored deuces in the third and fifth ends for a 5-2 lead. He added a single in the sixth and Simmons got one back with a draw in the eighth, but lost the hammer.

The Swedish skip used it for a double takeout and a blank in the ninth to retain last rock in the final end.

Ulsrud, the defending champion, had the day off Saturday after topping Simmons in the Page playoff 1-2 game on Friday night. Canada and Norway shared the best round-robin record at 10-1.

Edin beat Kauste 7-4 in the Page playoff 3-4 game to reach the semifinal.

Simmons, lead Nolan Thiessen, second Carter Rycroft and former skip Kevin Koe finished fourth last year in Beijing. John Morris joined the team this season before switching to third midway through the Tim Hortons Brier.

The move paid off as they made the playoffs and came through with three big wins for the national title. However, the Canadians had trouble with the big guns this week, falling in a rout to Ulsrud during the round robin and again in a tight 1-2 game.

In Canada's first must-win game, it was Edin who delivered the knockout blow.

Simmons and his teammates must now focus on trying to win the third-place game, always a tough task in a sport where anything less than gold for Canada is considered a disappointment.

Kauste, meanwhile, will have no trouble getting up for it.

The Finnish skip was not expected to make the final four in the 12-team field. He finished the round robin with a 6-5 record and came through with a tiebreaker win over the United States to get the fourth seed.

"We have one more game and we surely want to win a medal, it would mean a lot for us," Kauste said. "I don't know about the other playoff teams. They are all world champions so they probably don't care about any other medals than the gold, but bronze would be really big for us."

Attendance was 2,839 for the 3-4 game. Evening numbers for the 10,500-seat venue weren't immediately available.

Canada hasn't won gold at this event since Glenn Howard took the 2012 title in Basel. The Swiss city will host the tournament next year.

Morris won a world championship in 2008 in Grand Forks, N.D., with Marc Kennedy, Ben Hebert and retired skip Kevin Martin, a team that also won Olympic gold at the 2010 Vancouver Games. Rycroft and Thiessen won a world title with Koe and Blake MacDonald in 2010 at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.