Canadian coach Jon Cooper took a shot at the Winter Olympics overtime rules following his team's loss to the United States on Sunday morning.
The Americans topped the Canadians, 2-1, in overtime on Sunday. Jack Hughes scored the game-winning goal. The Winter Olympics have a 3-on-3 overtime, taking two players off of the ice from both teams. It creates a more open and freeflowing game, with the first goal ending things.
"You take four players off the ice, now hockey’s not hockey anymore. There’s a reason overtime and shootouts are in play — it’s all TV-driven to end games, so it’s not a long time. There’s a reason why it's not in the Stanley Cup final or playoffs," he said.
He's not the only one who feels that way, though.
Longtime U.S. hockey announcer Eddie Olczyk is calling for a change to the Winter Olympics hockey rules, too.
Should the Winter Olympics change the rule?
Olczyk appeared on 104.3 The Fan in Chicago on Monday to discuss the game.
“I would like to see them start at 5-on-5 for 10 minutes, and if nothing happens, then you go to 4-on-4,” Olczyk said. “If you want to go five minutes, but pick a number. I think it’s arbitrary. And then, well, because people may not understand, it’s the last event of the Olympics.”
He thinks it would benefit everyone.
“I think for us at NBC, we’d love to see a triple overtime game because you might end up getting 50, 60 million people at prime time,” Olczyk acknowledged. “But I think for the athlete, and for the game, I’d like to see it 5-on-5 for a period of time.”
“Eventually you’ve got to get to a winner so that the Olympics can close officially because if the Olympics closing ceremonies were going on and the men were still playing, it would obviously be a conflict of interest, and I don’t think the Olympic Committee would probably take too kindly to that,” he added. “But for us in the hockey game, I think we would take a 3 or 4 overtime game to settle a gold medal, and I think we’d be talking about that type of a game for many, many years.”
Do the Winter Olympics need to change?