It's Playoff Time in Grand Forks

The NHL's Stanley Cup playoffs are underway, but they won't conclude until sometime in June, so let's focus on the World Curling Championship playoffs which will be over by Sunday. Guaranteed!
Canada, after a convincing last round win over Craig Brown's American champs, finished atop the standings at 10-1 and will meet Scotland in the 1-2 Page Playoff game Friday night. Scotland's David Murdoch wound up with a record of 8 wins and 3 losses and his team of Euan Byers, Peter Smith and Graeme Connal were full measure in every game. They lost by one rock to Canada and the USA, and by two to the Czechs in first round action.
Statistically, the Scots measure up quite nicely with Canada. After the preliminaries, Canada's lead Ben Hebert and Scotland's Byers were tied in efficiency at 86%. At second Marc Kennedy outshot Peter Smith 86% to 84%. Canada's John Morris, who proved himself to be the All-World vice in the round-robin, outcurled Scotland's Connal by only 4 percentage points-90% -86%.
At skip, Canada's Kevin Martin was a wee bit better than his Scottish counterpart. He curled 86% to Murdoch's 82% in the round-robin.
Regardless of the 1-2 Page Playoff outcome, I'm thinking that these two teams will be featured in Grand Fork's grand finale come Sunday afternoon. It should make for some great curling. Hell, the Scots should be assured a place in the finals based on their brogues alone.
For the second time this year, a Chinese Wang will be front and center on the World Curling stage. Last month it was silver medalist Bingyu Wang who almost stole the show at the Women's World shootout and now it's Fengchun Wang who has led his team to the 3-4 Page Playoff. Wang and his team of Jialong Zang, Xiaoming Xu and Riu Liu are making China's first trip to the World Championship a memorable one. These guys, who have been working toward this since 2001, are probably the closest thing to full time professionals in the field.
Wang will face Thomas Ulsrud in the 3-4 game, after the Norwegians claimed sole possession of fourth place with an exciting 9-7 extra end win against Australia in the final round-robin draw.
Leading 7-5 after nine ends, Australia's Hugh Millikin let Norway off the hook, allowing Ulsrud a deuce in the tenth and a steal of 2 more in the eleventh end. An Australian win would have meant tie breakers featuring themselves, Norway and France to determine fourth place.