Canada wins 2016 World Men's Curling Championship

The simple description of Canada's 5-3 win over Denmark in the gold medal game of the 2016 world Men's Curling Championship came from the winning skip, Kevin Koe.

“Nothing flashy, but we were solid and pulled it out in the end,” a smiling Koe told the TSN television audience moments after he and his teammates Ben Hebert, Brent Laing and Marc Kennedy had run the Danish team out of stones in the tenth end.

Well, there was the occasional bit of flashy shooting, actually, including Koe's final shot of the game. It was a missile that squeezed a frozen Danish stone off the button and sideways out of the house to end it.

At that moment, Canada had secured it's 35th global men's curling championship and first since Glenn Howard's 2012 Ontario team emerged victorious, coincidentally, at the same venue in Basel, Switzerland.

In some respects, this game was an apt representation of the emergence of Koe's second year team. The rink from Calgary's Glencoe Club was out of sorts through most of the first half but then really found their rhythm just before the break. It's a narrative that parallels the foursome's existence over their first two seasons. Year one was tough sledding for the quartet, as they struggled to find a solid team resonance. Year two, however, has seen the Koe Komets streak across the sky, with the world title being their seventh win in twelve events.

Against a very game Danish team, skipped by Rasmus Stjerne, Koe and his mates struggled through the first four ends, trailing 2-1. "They're making everything," said TSN analyst Russ Howard of the Danes, who looked sharper than the Canadians. In the fourth end Stjerne made a fantastic double in a cluttered corner of the back of the house while Canada was suffering through miscommunication on sweeping. Koe asked Hebert why he didn't get on a rock when asked to. Hebert replied he wasn't sure the skip was asking for him or Laing to hit the broom. Kennedy expressed his displeasure.

They would solve their problems and hit the accelerator in the next end, while Stjerne and his mates would start to make the mistakes that would help undo their hopes in the late going.

The fifth end was a thing of beauty, with both teams firing gems. Canada shook off the difficulties of the fourth when Laing made two superb shots - a draw to the top of the button through traffic and then a tap and roll on top of his first stone. Kennedy followed with an incredible hit and roll from the perimeter, and his rolling stone tapped one of Laing's rocks frozen to a Danish counter in the back eight. Stjerne executed a tough double with his first and then just missed an extremely difficult triple with his final shot, leaving Koe to make his first draw of the game, which he did for two and a 3-2 lead at the break.

Koe then followed with such a good roll on his last shot in the sixth that Stjerne opted not to flirt with a guard on a blank attempt. Instead, he drew for one to tie the game. Canada blanked the seventh and looked to be forced in the eighth when Stjerne made a mistake on his last, allowing for another.

It was a sign of things to come for the Danish team.

In the ninth, Stjerne's team struggled to execute and the skip opted for a difficult double raise takeout on a Canadian stone, rather than drawing behind cover and hoping for a force. He missed that runback, left the Canadian stone in the house and Koe drew for the deuce and a 5-3 lead.

While the Danes were slipping, the Canadians were surging, with Kennedy continuing to make peaches, finishing his portion of the game with a superb double in the tenth end. Koe, Laing and Kennedy all ended the game with the same 91% shooting score while Hebert booked a 95%. As a team they fired at 92% efficiency.

Stjerne and his teammates - third Johnny Frederiksen, second Mikkel Poulsen and lead Troels Harry - ended the game with a collective 87%, with Frederiksen's 79% popping out when compared to Kennedy's 91%. Stjerne, who had been shooting 96% at one point (with many of his shots being of the difficult variety), fell to a total of 88% in a late game falter. Still, the Danish team will come away with a great amount of pride, winning their country's first ever silver medal at a men's world championship.

Koe and the Canadians had no such wiggle room, of course. Gold or bust is the credo for Canadian curling fans every year. With the men not having won since 2012 - and Canadian women failing again this year to end their own drought stretching back to 2008 - a silver medal would have been seen as a failure by many.

With a win that mirrored their team's history, Koe and his mates don't have to worry about that.

In the bronze medal game, The U.S., skipped by John Shuster, defeated Japan by a score of 8-6. It's the first world championship medal for the Americans since 2007. The victory came a day after the Americans scored a controversial win against Japan in the 3 v 4 playoff game.