LAS VEGAS — Canada's Brad Gushue secured a playoff berth and kept pace with the leaders at the men's world curling championship Thursday.

The defending champion downed China's Dejia Zou 7-4 to get to 8-1 alongside Scotland's Bruce Mouat.

Sweden's Niklas Edin was 9-1 following a 7-3 victory over Russia's Alexey Timofeev, who fell to 5-4.

Gushue faced Greg Persinger of the U.S. in Thursday evening when the Swedes were idle.

Gushue and Edin clash Friday morning in a matchup with playoff seeding implications. The Canadians conclude the preliminary round at night against Alexander Baumann of Germany (1-9).

Under the new world curling championship format, the six teams with the best records at the end of pool play make playoffs instead of the previous four.

The top two get byes to Saturday's semifinals, with three to six squaring off in a quarterfinal round earlier that day. The medal games are Sunday.

Gushue, third Mark Nichols, second Brett Gallant and lead Geoff Walker from St. John's, N.L., went undefeated to win the world title last year in Edmonton.

It was Sweden's win 10-2 win over China on Thursday morning, when Canada had the draw off, that assured Gushue one of the six playoff spots.

Trailing Canada by three, China blanked the ninth end and couldn't generate three points coming home to force an extra end.

Gushue picked China's shot stone out of the rings in the eighth end to score a three-pointer and lead 7-4.

After scoring a point with hammer in the sixth, China stole another in the seventh to pull even with Canada at 4-4. Gushue tried a double takeout for two but stuffed a Chinese stone onto Canadian granite.

Canada trailing 2-1 heading into the fifth end, a pair of mistakes by Chinese third Qiang Zou allowed Gushue to set up a multi-point score. The Canadian skip drew for three points and a 4-2 at the break.