Get ready to hear an awful lot about goal differential the next few days.
Because of the chaos in Group B in the men’s Olympic hockey tournament, it’s now highly likely that two of the best three teams in the event will face one another in a do-or-die quarterfinal next week.
The reasons why come down to some of the odd tiebreak scenarios in the Olympics format. Because Sweden, Finland and Slovakia will have tied atop the group with the same number of points, they are separated by their goal differential in the three games they played against one another.
Those three games:
Slovakia 4, Finland 1
Finland 4, Sweden 1
Sweden 5, Slovakia 3
Goal differential in those games:
Slovakia: +1
Finland: 0
Sweden: -1
In the end, Dalibor Dvorsky’s seemingly meaningless goal for Slovakia with 39 seconds left in Saturday’s game against Sweden proved to be the difference. Now that Finland has beaten Italy, the Slovaks will win the group, and Sweden will shockingly fall to third.
This has major ramifications for the rest of the event, with Sweden now on a collision course to face either Canada or the United States in the quarterfinals Wednesday.
After every team finishes the preliminary stage, which ends Sunday with Canada facing France and the U.S. playing Germany, all 12 teams in the tournament will be ranked one through 12. The top four teams get a bye to the quarterfinals, and the remaining eight teams have to face one another in the qualification playoffs.
From that point on, if you lose a game, you go home (or play for bronze if you lose in the semifinals).
The criteria for ranking teams begins with a team’s placing in its group, meaning top-ranked Group B team Slovakia will be in the top three, second-place Finland will be in the four-to-six range, and Sweden will fall somewhere from seventh to ninth. Because they all won two games and have a decent goal differential when you include the Italy games, Finland and Sweden are highly likely to finish at the top of their predicted ranges. Slovakia, meanwhile, will fall to third overall, assuming Canada and the U.S. win their remaining games against three hockey minnows (France, Denmark and Germany).
So the ranking heading into the qualification and quarterfinals projects like so:
Bye teams
1. Canada or U.S.
2. Canada or U.S.
3. Slovakia
4. Finland
Qualification teams
5. Switzerland/Czech Republic
6. Latvia/Germany
7. Sweden
8. Switzerland/Czech Republic/Germany
9. Switzerland/Czech Republic/Germany
10. Latvia/Denmark
11. Italy
12. France
Remember to check out The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn’s fantastic projections for a deeper breakdown of the odds.
Those are the most likely outcomes. Some slim-odds scenarios could see some movement with the tournament’s remaining five games. But they fundamentally won’t change the fact that some of the best teams are lining up to face one another in the quarterfinals.
The qualification playoffs involve the fifth-place team facing the 12th team (likely France), sixth facing 11th (likely Italy), seventh (Sweden) facing 10th, and eighth and ninth playing the final game.
Whoever wins those games then faces one of the top four teams in the quarterfinals. The weird thing is the Olympics doesn’t reseed for the quarters and instead has a bracket, so we know which of the top four teams are facing which of the qualification playoff winners.
That looks like so, via Wikipedia:
In a nutshell? The No. 1 team will face the winner of a game featuring some combination of Switzerland, Germany and the Czech Republic. And the No. 2 team will get the winner of Sweden versus Latvia or Denmark.
So you want to finish atop the tournament and get that top seed to avoid the third-best team in the world.
Unsurprisingly, that brings us back to where we started: goal differential.
Canada and the U.S. are the only teams that can still get to 3-0 in the tournament. If they win every remaining game in regulation, they will be tied with nine points and goal differential will determine who gets the top seed.
After two games against the Czechs and Swiss, Canada is at plus-9. After one win over Latvia, the U.S. is at plus-4.
The problem for the Americans is that while their final two opponents are relatively easy, Canada has last-place France for its final round-robin game. All the Canadians need to do is pummel the 14th-ranked country in the world, and they should get that top seed.
It’s possible the U.S. can similarly beat up on Denmark, especially with the Danes playing a backup goaltender in Saturday’s meeting. That would then put a lot of pressure on Sunday’s games. If Canada can blow out France 7-0 or something similar Sunday morning, the Americans would enter their meeting with a solid German squad needing a ton of goals to close the gap.
It’s not a great scenario for the tournament that it might come down to star-laden NHL rosters trying to blow out smaller countries to get a better quarterfinal opponent. But with a gold medal on the line, they can’t afford to play around, given the high drama likely on the horizon in the elimination games.
On the flipside, this is all good news for an unexpected nation. Slovakia now appears as though it will face Latvia or Germany in the quarterfinals, meaning one of those teams will advance to the semifinals and play for a medal, barring something really unexpected.
If you’re a fan of chaos, it has come to the Olympic tournament in a big way. So get your popcorn and settle in, especially if you like seeing the big teams pile up a lot of goals.
