It’s over when the referee whistles! Or not? At the women’s Olympic ice hockey tournament in Beijing, this unwritten rule did not apply in the duel between the USA and Finland on Thursday (February 3, 2002). And rightly so.
Goal wrongly disallowed by Finland’s Tapani
What happened? At the end of the game between the two major ice hockey nations, the referees did not give a correctly scored goal by the Finns. Finland’s Susanna Tapani scored with 2:20 minutes to go to make it 2:5, but the referees thought the puck wasn’t in the goal. A wrong decision, as it turned out after the final whistle and the study of the video images.
Two minutes and 20 seconds “overtime”
Both teams had already gathered on the ice to shake hands when the referees decided that another two minutes and 20 seconds had to be replayed.
However, Finland didn’t manage to turn things around in the unexpected “overtime”. It stayed at 2:5, but the games in Beijing were enriched by a curious story.