Team Slovakia needs Finland to beat Italy in regulation to clinch Group B despite losing 5-3 to Sweden on Saturday. Here's a quick look at the tiebreaker scenario.
Team Slovakia lost 5-3 to Sweden in Olympic men's hockey on Saturday, but they celebrated as if they won.
After all, Sweden pulled their goalie despite having that lead but could not score once more.
That's the beauty of Olympic hockey – every goal matters.
And if Finland beat Italy in regulation, Slovakia would be Group B winners due to goal differential.
Sweden took the Group B lead after beating Slovakia, because if only two teams are tied in points in the group, then the head-to-head result breaks the tie.
But if Finland win in regulation and earn three points, then they, Sweden and Slovakia will have six points each.
When three or more teams are tied in points – and in this case, it will be a maximum of three, because Italy lost twice in regulation already – a tiebreaking process comes into effect.
Those teams are treated as a subgroup, and the first tiebreaker is the number of points they earned against each other.
Slovakia beat Finland 4-1 and lost 5-3 to Sweden, so they earned three points. Sweden lost 4-1 to Finland and beat Slovakia, so they got three points as well. That meant Finland also received three points for beating Sweden.
With the three teams still being tied, the next tiebreaker is goal differential.
Finland's goal differential in those two games was even. The Swedes were minus-1. Slovakia's goal differential was plus-1.
And that's why Sweden pulled Jacob Markstrom for the extra attacker after Slovakia's Dalibor Dvorsky scored a power-play goal with one second left in Lucas Raymond's penalty.
Slovakia need help from Finland if they want to clinch Group B, which would give them a bye to the quarterfinals without having to play a knockout game in the qualifying round.
But while Finland cannot clinch the group, they will still want to have the best possible goal differential heading into the knockout stages.
After the preliminary round, all the teams are ranked from one to 12. The criteria to determine the ranking is, in order: higher position in the group, higher number of points, better goal differential, higher number of goals-for and better IIHF world ranking.
The No. 4 seed also gets a bye to the quarterfinal, so essentially, the highest-ranked team that doesn't win its group will avoid the qualifying round.
Finland would have a higher group position than Sweden if they beat Italy in regulation. It's pretty likely that they would be tied in points with teams in other groups, so goal differential will be the tiebreaker in that scenario.
As for teams in other groups, they now know that at least one of Finland or Sweden will be in the qualfying round. And for Canada, which clinched Group A already, and the United States, which will likely clinch Group C, they could end up facing Sweden in the quarterfinals.
Finland play Italy at 10:40 a.m. ET on Saturday, so let's see what happens. This story will be updated after that game.
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