‘Hockey’s not hockey any extra’: did three-on-three extra time destroy Canada’s Olympics? | Winter Olympics 2026

Two Olympic finals in opposition to the US, two robust performances, two sudden-death losses. Canada is so over extra time.

Whereas all good issues should come to an finish, it’s arduous to fathom why hockey’s worldwide rule-makers assume that the perfect issues – big clashes that had been a few of the hottest tickets of all the Olympics – ought to be ended utilizing three-on-three golden-goal extra time, an idea beloved solely by individuals with a prepare to catch or agency dinner reservations.

Forty-six years after the Miracle on Ice, the US women and men celebrated with a pair of big assists from the Misrule on Ice. Following an extra time winner by Megan Keller that noticed the People break cussed Canadian resistance within the ladies’s last on Thursday, one other 2-1 win for the US in opposition to their neighbours in Milan on Sunday handed the lads their first gold because the well-known conquer the Soviet Union at Lake Placid in 1980.

On the finish of regulation throughout two mesmerizing knife-edge finals, the foundations decreed: OK, that’s sufficient high-quality five-on-five hockey. Let’s put an finish to all this drama as shortly as attainable by forcing the groups to play a unique format to determine the end result of a very powerful contests in worldwide hockey.

On the one hand – the odd doubtful refereeing name and a powerful goaltending show from USA’s Connor Hellebuyck apart – Canada’s males have solely themselves guilty for failing to benefit from their dominance on Sunday. They outshot the US 42-28 and nerves appeared to sneak in, most clearly when Nathan MacKinnon pushed the puck broad of an open web within the third interval, lacking a chance so easy that the pitiless Canadian curling murderer, Brad Jacobs, little question might have scored it with a flick of his broom.

And extra time gave to Canada – Mitch Marner scored an extra-frame winner in opposition to Czechia within the quarter-finals – earlier than it took away. Nevertheless it’s not solely about them: three of the lads’s quarter-finals went to extra time, together with the US’s victory over Sweden. Switzerland’s ladies took bronze with an extra time win over Sweden.

Within the sense that impatience, derangement and ripping up custom to facilitate the merciless and arbitrary sorting of teams of people into winners and losers in a frenzied made-for-screens spectacle defines this cultural and political period, then the format is completely suited to our instances.

Savagely abrupt endings make for excellent TV: lower to overjoyed winners, lower to surprised losers, lower forwards and backwards time and again, gorging on the contrasting emotional overloads, stillness and shock, hugs and bliss.

It forces everybody to attend 15 or so minutes for a passage of play that’s more likely to be over inside a couple of seconds. Or, because it turned out on Sunday, 101 seconds, with Jack Hughes crashing the puck previous Jordan Binnington as a weary Canada had been caught off form on the counter. From a ratings-hungry tv govt’s perspective, this helpfully means viewers can’t take their eyes off the motion as a result of it might finish at any second.

Canada coach Jon Cooper didn’t blame the extra time laws for his workforce’s loss – he stated his gamers “knew the foundations coming in” – however he did assume they affected the spectacle. “You are taking 4 gamers off the ice, now hockey’s not hockey any extra. There’s a cause extra time and shootouts are in play – it’s all TV-driven to finish video games, so it’s not a very long time. There’s a cause why it’s not within the Stanley Cup Last or playoffs,” Cooper told reporters after Sunday’s recreation.

That’s not bitter grapes. It’s simply plain-speaking: Olympic extra-time evokes robust emotions. “Whoever dreamed up enjoying three-on-three in extra time to determine a gold medal hockey recreation within the Olympics ought to be stacked right into a bobsleigh and pushed down a ski soar,” frothed one Edmonton Journal writer after the ladies’s last.

It doesn’t actually divide opinion, nonetheless, as a result of just about nobody thinks it’s a good suggestion. It’s arduous to discern any logic behind a rule that so essentially adjustments the dynamics, debasing the competition into quasi-random pinball, or as if the gamers have stepped right into a online game. It introduces what ordinarily is the consequence for infringements – lowering the numbers on the ice – into the construction of the match, such as you’re punishing everybody for failing to get the job finished in 60 minutes.

Not like soccer, it’s not as if hockey is a sport identified for defensive play and few possibilities wherein groups generally should be incentivized to assault. It’s inherently thrilling and nobody is enjoying for a tie. The danger of an interminable match is far decrease than in, say, baseball and tennis, two sports activities which have tinkered with the foundations to supply winners sooner.

Perhaps there’s a case for three-on-three over a assured time frame, say, 5 or 10 minutes. Or sudden dying with the total complement of gamers. However each on the identical time? You keep away from a shootout – a powerful motivation for the NHL and the IIHF, hockey’s worldwide governing physique, which eradicated them for the gold medal recreation in favour of enjoying on till a profitable objective is scored. However are five-on-five shootouts actually any much less pressurized or capricious? “I assume, 50-50 battle there,” Binnington ruefully told reporters when requested in regards to the extra interval.

When extra time is settled by a single shot, possible after not more than a few minutes of end-to-end play wherein each groups have had possibilities, there in all probability isn’t sufficient helpful context or knowledge from that interval to conclude that the end result is honest, that one workforce has deserved it extra. The objective is simply one thing that occurred, like a lightning bolt out of the blue. It leaves the impartial numb and feeling cheated by a format divorced from the deadlocked hour that’s gone earlier than.

By rebooting the match so radically, the reality that Canada had been a lot the higher workforce in regulation was rendered irrelevant. The rhythm was all-new; the prolongation was a rebirth of the ultimate, not a continuation. It ransacked the match of that means. “You be the decide of who was the higher workforce immediately,” MacKinnon told reporters, seemingly treating the end result with as a lot disdain as he did the stuffed toy he acquired along with his silver medal.

Three-on-three is rather more defensible in round-robin video games or 82-fixture NHL common seasons, when there’s much less at stake. The People and Canadians are extremely accustomed to the format because it’s been used to settle NHL regular-season overtimes since 2015-16. For the most important single match within the sport, nonetheless, it feels excessive. Notably, when it issues most within the NHL – through the playoffs – extra time is five-on-five.

When Canada beat the US within the 2010 last in Vancouver with an extra time Sidney Crosby objective the format was four-on-four. That’s clearly a extra cheap compromise. One other technique to settle tied video games can be 5 or ten minutes of five-on-five, then if vital a swap to four-on-four, then three-on-three for so long as it takes. Regardless, it’s all an unwelcome distraction from what the aftermath of an enormous hockey match ought to actually be about: complaining about the officiating.