Note for Tonight's Showdown

Going into the 11th draw of the 2009 Ford Men's World Curling Championship, Canada and Norway lead the round robin and will meet each other. Canada is undefeated with a record of 6 wins and no losses. Whether Norway is undefeated or has one loss depends on the outcome of their game with Switzerland, which is taking place as I am contemplating this posting.

The point I wanted to make is that if you look at the CurlCast data, you see that Canada leads all teams in curling percentage, while Norway was tied for third, a full six percentage points behind Canada in curling percentage.

Now, I know that curling percentage is not a perfect measure of a team's quality, ability, or performance. I know it is not a perfect predictor of outcomes. But I also know it is a mighty strong indicator of these things*. The fact is, as good as Norway has been, they have not been nearly as good as Canada so far during the round robin.

Additionally, note that neither Norway nor Canada has yet faced the next best team, Scotland.
So even though this looks as if it has the makings of being a showdown, there will be more important and tougher matches to come.

*A student did some stats for me a few years ago and found R-squares in the range of .72 or so when trying to use curling percentages to explain points scored.