Last month, a youth club ice hockey game’s overtime regulations ventured into the ridiculous.
In Minnesota, at the U-12 girls’ hockey level, a tied regulation game in the playoff is broken by playing continuous 10-minute overtimes. Emphasis on “continuous.”
On Presidents’ Day, the St. Paul Saints and the Cottage Grove Wolfpack met in a District 8 Tier B playoff game. Regulation ended with the teams deadlocked at 1-1. The teams would then go into overtime.
And again. And again. The two sides played six 10-minute overtime periods without scoring before closing out play with the sides level. The teams came back to Doug Woog Arena the next day, looking to take advantage of an hour of ice time between events at the rink. Four more overtimes ensued without a winner.
Now, here’s where it is useful to know the context in which this game was played. The game was not played under the rules of the National Federation, but under the aegis of Minnesota Hockey, a chapter of USA Hockey, the national governing body of the sport.
It was decided, after the second day of play between the Saints and Wolfpack, that the two teams would return to Woog arena for a single 10-minute overtime period under the prevailing rules, with the teams playing five a side. If the teams remained tied, a single 3-on-3 overtime perioud would be played.
The game then would go to the IIHF shootout, with teams shooting five shots each. And after that, the two teams remained level.
Enter Ashlyn Anderson, who scored on her team’s sixth shot attempt to win the game.
This game stretched credulity as well as technology; look at the box score as posted on the World Wide Web. The shots of both teams during the 12 overtime periods were lumped into one:
My takeaway from the game is this: Minnesota Hockey, which has been around since the late 1940s, should have had the forethought to write up tiebreaker rules for playoff games. It’s stupefying that the mechanisms that other organizations (IIHF, NHL) have cooked up over the last few years were not afforded to the U12s who played their hearts out.
Kind of reminds me of the situation when a Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association state final field hockey game in 1995 between Lewis Cape Henlopen (Del.) and Wilmington Tower Hill (Del.). The two long-standing powers played the longest known overtime segment in National Federation history. The overtime periods, held over two days, totaled 108 minutes and 41 seconds.
Fortunately, almost every state in the Union breaks ties — even in the final — with a penalty shootout.
Something for Minnesota Hockey to think about.