BOSTON - Canada's Patrick Chan took his first step toward a sixth world figure skating championships medal on Wednesday.

The three-time world champion, who is making a comeback after an 18-month competitive break, finished with 94.84 points in Wednesday's short program.

The 25-year-old from Toronto performed to Michael Buble's "Mack the Knife." Chan landed a beautiful quad toe-loop, but fell on his triple Axel.

Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan was first with 110.56 points, defending world champion Javier Fernandez of Spain was second with 98.52 points and Chan sat third.

Earlier Wednesday, two-time Canadian champions Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje find themselves with considerable ground to make up after finishing fourth in the short dance.

"I think that we skated very well today," Weaver said, visibly disappointed. "I think it was one of our strongest short dances to date. Where the disconnect was between that and our score, I'm not sure. But that's not what we can control.

"We were selling everything we've got, and that's what we're going to do (Thursday) as well."

Defending champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France were first with 76.29 points. Maia and Alex Shibutani were second with 74.70 points, with fellow Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates third at 72.46.

Piper Gilles of Toronto and Paul Poirier of Unionville, Ont., were fifth at 70.70.

Weaver, from Toronto, and Poje, from Waterloo, Ont., won world silver in a depleted field in 2014, and then bronze last season.

They've won all but two events over the past two seasons, including the Grand Prix Final in December.

Wednesday, their romantic waltz to music by Johann Strauss — with Poje wearing a smart cummerbund and tails, and Weaver in an elegant beaded cream dress — was a crowd pleaser at TD Garden, normally home to the Boston Celtics and Bruins. But the judges weren't quite as impressed, downgrading the Canadians on a couple of elements. They scored 71.83 points.

Poje said they had no explanation for the scores, saying "We're on to the next thing."

Before their skate, the 29-year-old Poje was spotted rubbing his back. It was tight, he explained, due to a nasty spill in a warmup earlier Wednesday. They insisted the fall had nothing to do with their performance.

"It was on one of our leaps and we went down," Weaver said. "He took the brunt of both of our forces. But we're okay. We're tough cookies."

After years of skating in the shadow of Canada's Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Weaver and Poje have enjoyed the spotlight as the team to beat the past two seasons.

"That was the first time in our career we were enjoying the benefits of our hard work in terms of results," Weaver said. "We never really won anything before and then we came out of the blue in a way and started acquiring these gold medals. So, it was good for our confidence. We needed to believe that we could be the champions and not always in the shadows. And that's where we believe we belong.

"We're not going to be OK with not being at the top."

Gilles and Poirier, meanwhile, were thrilled with their result, a solid seven points better than their previous best. After their fifth-place finish at Four Continents last month, they scrapped their music and started virtually from scratch. Their previous music was a mix of Beatles and Mozart. They decided to go with straight Beatles.

"This event was really a black box, we had no idea how the changes would be received," Poirier said.

Canada's ice dance teams will have to contend with Virtue and Moir again next season. The Canadians, who are in Boston this week working with CBC's broadcast crew, have announced they're making a comeback.

"Canada is so strong and I think we're happy to be a part of that," Gilles said. "I think for us at the beginning, we were like 'Oh man, where are we going to sit? This worlds is going to be weird. People will think something different because someone else is coming back.'

"But we had to kind of step back and be like 'No, this is our time right now, and we need to just embrace it and skate as well as we can.'"

Canada's three-time world champion Patrick Chan was scheduled to skate the men's short program later Wednesday at TD Garden.