Team Slovakia clinched Group B despite losing 5-3 to Sweden after Finland beat Italy 10-0. Here's how the tiebreaker process worked.
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.
After Finland beat Italy 10-0, Slovakia clinched Group B due to goal differential.
Sweden briefly 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 when Finland won in regulation and earned three points, they, Sweden and Slovakia had six points each.
When three or more teams are tied in points – in this case, it's three – 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.
With Slovakia getting help from Finland, they have a bye to the quarterfinals without having to play a knockout game in the qualifying round.
And while Finland were not able to clinch the group, they still wanted 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.
Team Finland has a higher group position than Sweden after beating 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. They're now at plus-10 after that blowout win on Saturday.
As for teams in other groups, they now know that Sweden will be in the qualifying 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.
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