The International Ice Hockey Federation is pleased with how the three-on-three overtime format played out at the recent Milan Cortina Olympics and isn’t considering any changes to how games are decided beyond regulation moving forward, IIHF president Luc Tardif told The Athletic on Tuesday.
Tardif noted that none of the 30 men’s games contested in Milan required a shootout. Five were decided in overtime, including a 2-1 victory by Team USA over Team Canada in Sunday’s gold-medal game.
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“It’s the best rules to fit in a tight schedule,” Tardif said. “We have to figure out 30 games in 11 days for men and for the women 28 games in 13 days — 58 (games) — altogether in 16 days.
“Huge challenge.”
The IIHF made the switch to three-on-three overtime in 2019 after seeing multiple gold-medal games decided by a shootout — including the 2017 World Juniors, 2018 men’s World Championship, 2018 women’s Olympics and 2019 women’s World Championship.
Before that, IIHF rules dictated that one overtime period of four-on-four was played in gold-medal games before a five-round shootout. The change to a three-on-three format was made with the goal of ending those games before the skills competition.
The Milan Games were the first featuring NHL players with the new tiebreaker, and some observers questioned whether it was too fundamentally different from the five-on-five play used during regulation time to decide games of that magnitude. Four countries had their tournaments end with an overtime loss: the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden and Canada.
“I’m not sure I’ve heard a hockey person tell me otherwise that they think it should be three-on-three,” Ottawa Senators coach Travis Green told reporters Monday.
After the gold-medal game, Team Canada coach Jon Cooper noted that the rules were clear to everyone ahead of time and said, “You have to tip your cap to them,” following the gold-medal loss to the Americans.
But he also called it “different hockey.”
“Overtime is overtime,” Cooper said. “If you take four players off the ice, now hockey is not hockey anymore. There is a reason why overtime and shootouts are in play. It is all TV-driven to end games, so there is not a long time. There is a reason it is not in the Stanley Cup Final or the playoffs.”
The NHL introduced three-on-three overtime in 2015, but it’s only used during the regular season.
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Overtime games in the playoffs remain five-on-five and are played until a goal is scored. That occasionally sees games stretch well into the night, like when Cooper’s Tampa Bay Lightning played into a fifth overtime against the Columbus Blue Jackets during the 2020 playoffs.
That’s simply not an option in international competition, according to Tardif.
The IIHF can’t accommodate overtimes lasting two or more periods while also hosting as many as three games per day in one venue during a big event. The Olympics include an extra complicating factor because the closing ceremony was scheduled immediately after the gold-medal game. That’s one of the biggest shows imaginable, with a worldwide audience of several million across multiple networks, and it can’t be delayed.
By using the three-on-three format, which opens up much more room for players to make skilled offensive plays, none of the five men’s games that required overtime in Milan lasted more than 3:27 of extra time before the winning goal was scored. In preliminary-round games, those games would have gone to shootouts after a five-minute overtime. In knockout games, it’s a 10-minute overtime followed by a shootout. And the gold-medal game would have had 20-minute overtime periods with no shootout.
Jack Hughes scored the Golden Goal against Jordan Binnington at 1:41 on Sunday.
American Megan Keller scored the overtime winner in the women’s gold-medal game against Canada at 4:07, while the women’s bronze-medal game ended at 9:09 of overtime when Switzerland’s Alina Muller scored against Sweden.
Both Olympic tournaments kept their original schedule as a result.
“It’s the best rules to fit,” Tardif said. “The OT format will remain the same moving forward.”