KAETLYN OSMOND WINS WORLD TITLE.

Jones rink heads into playoff round No. 1 seed

Canada had very little to lose on Friday, the final day of round-robin play at the World Women’s Curling Championship.

Only everything is on the line now.

After clinching a Top 2 finish Thursday night, skip Jennifer Jones led her team into the next morning draw against Japan and a finale versus the U.S. with merely the incentive of finishing first on the line and the grand prize that comes with it: Choice of first end hammer or rocks in the rest of their remaining games.

Sewing up top seed was taken care of with an 8-5 victory over Japan, a game Canada saw as so important that it “rested” Jill Officer, the team’s veteran second.

Officer also came out of Thursday night’s game against Italy early.

“Yeah, she has blisters,” said Canada coach Elaine Dagg-Jackson, “but that doesn’t stop her.”

Jones will next play in a Saturday night (7 p.m.) semifinal against an opponent that will be determined from qualification games that morning featuring South Korea, Russia, the U.S. and Czech Republic — unless China could work itself into a draw shot tiebreaker with the Czechs on Friday night.

A Saturday night loss would still leave Canada with a shot at bronze on Sunday morning, but at this point anything less than gold would be a disappointment.

“Yay,” Jones said after locking down first. “You start off the week always just wanting to make the playoffs and then the week is going on, and you’re like, OK, let’s try to make that semi. To be ranked No. 1 is nice.”

Jones said the rocks have been “fairly good” at Memorial Gardens this week, which means she’ll take hammer on Saturday night. With that is a slight advantage.

“You get to set the tone in a game (but) I don’t think it’s essential,” she said. “It’s nice to be able to set the tone. And having hammer always gives you the ability to see how the game starts off. We always like having hammer.”

Canada’s 24th-consecutive world championship win, dating back to Rachel’s Homan’s clean sweep in Beijing last year, established a new record for the event. Combined with the national men’s team, it also extended Canada’s streak of world championship wins to 41 games.

After the morning draw, it looked like the U.S. would need a victory in its game against the home team in order to make the playoffs, but with the results of the afternoon draw, skip Jamie Sinclair’s Americans fell into a Top 6 spot.

The question then is, did Canada suffer any type of mental letup after playing a pair of Friday’s games that had no real ramifications? And if so, can the switch now be flipped back on?

“Everybody deals with that in a different personal manner,” said Dagg-Jackson. “These athletes are very independent in their ability to prepare for the game, get ready for the game. Probably each one of them approaches a big playoff game a little differently than they do in a round-robin game, when it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. You don’t want to do that, but it’s not like you’re putting any demands on yourself, that it has to be a performance peak.

“It’s more about staying loose and staying ready. It’s not like they’re trying to go out and not play their best, because they’re always trying to do that. But I think you just have a little bit different kind of determination, when it really matters, when it really counts.”

Also worth following is Officer’s status.

She was capably replaced by alternate Shannon Birchard — who filled in as third for the team at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts last month while Kaitlyn Lawes was preparing for the Olympic mixed-doubles competition. But the stakes now are higher.

“You have to take it rock by rock,” said the 23-year old Birchard. “The girls were super great about keeping me in the present and not looking too far ahead in the Scotties. So I think if it comes to that, they would do the same for me on Saturday.”

Meanwhile, Jones put a “pretty good” label on the team’s first 11 games of the worlds.

“I feel like we’ve adapted well to the ice,” she said. “We’ve been OK with making a few mistakes in order to make better shots later on. And we’re making big shots when we have to, so that’s really what winning is all about.”