OSTERSUND – Sweden's Oskar Eriksson is known as 'Professor' because of his studies of curling strategy. Eriksson skips the youngest team in the men's World Junior Championships and by beating the oldest, Manuel Ruch's Swiss, 5-4 in Wednesday morning's sixth-round draw, the sixteen year-old student from Karlstad ensured that his team has a share of the top of the leaderboard.

"He always plays well," said Swedish lead Nils Karlsson of Eriksson."He is amazing!" 

In night action, Sweden gamely challenged Canada in a see-saw battle. Eriksson appeared to have control until Canada's William Dion snapped a three-ender in the ninth for a 7-5 lead. Eriksson got his deuce to force the extra end but Dion drew to the four-foot with his final stone for the 8-7 win.

The Canadians became the first men's team to claim a playoff berth.

"It's amazing," said Dion.

"We played a perfect end in the ninth, and that was pretty much the game."

Dion's three-count was his team's first multiple-point end in the competition to date.

"And only a few deuces too," said Dion. "Yeah, we play pretty defensively. But everybody knows that."

In other Wednesday night (round seven) matchups, Germany beat Norway 7-2, China crushed the Czech Republic 8-4, The United States handled Switzerland 9-5 and Denmark defeated Scotland 6-3.

In the earlier round six games, Canada beat the luckless Scots 6-3, China took two in the 10th to beat Germany 6-5, Norway overcame Denmark 8-5 and it took two extra ends before the United States could record their 6-4 win over the Czech Republic.

In the afternoon women's draw, Sweden beat Canada 7-6 in an extra end. Swedish skip Cissi Ostlund had to draw the eight-foot circle with two Canadian stones lying in scoring position. Her throw looked strong, but the stone dug in to give Sweden the win.

"It was an important game for us," said Ostlund afterward.

"We really needed to win this. We didn't play very well against Switzerland yesterday, so it has been good for our confidence that we won."

The Canadians were disappointed.

"We controlled the game," said Kaitlyn Lawes. "If my last stone had finished where my sweepers said it was, we would have won."

Lawes was referring to her last-ditch draw attempt, which seemed to grind abruptly to a halt.

In other women's matches, Russia edged Japan 8-7 and Scotland defeated Germany 5-4, with both winning countries sharing top spot in the standings with Sweden.

Norway also stole the ninth and 10th end to beat Switzerland 7-5. It marked Norway's first women's win since their two successes on opening day.

Real-time results are available at: www.curlingkanalen.se with daily results mirrored on the World Curling Federation website at: results.worldcurling.org

Curlingkanalen is also webcasting selected matches live during the championships, and the men's and women's championship finals will be broadcast on Eurosport's Swedish channel (March 8 at 1400 local and March 9 at 1400).

The event host website is: www.wjcc2008.org