Posted on 02/23/2026 8:53:31 AM PST by V_TWIN
Jon Cooper is blaming the Olympic overtime rules for Canada’s loss to the United States.
Unlike the 4 Nations Face-Off and the Stanley Cup Playoffs, where the overtime period is five-on-five, the Olympics use a three-on-three format. This is designed to make overtime periods quicker and reduce shootouts. It’s also used in the NHL regular season.
“You take four players off the ice, now hockey’s not hockey anymore,” Cooper said, via The Hockey News. ”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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Agreed. Canada lost the game in the second and third periods when they outshot us by a 2 - 1 margin yet could not push across a goal. Our goalie was simply outstanding.
My son had a baseball coach who used to say, if we had scored enough runs, it take the bad ump calls out of the equation.
They loved it when they won with it in semis.
Makar got burnt on the OT goal - he stepped forward to get the puck but it did not work and he was left in the dust. On the earlier goal, Toews got skated right past. It happens but it’s not the fault of the refs or the rules. Same goes for having McDavid and McKinnon and not scoring on a 5-on-3. So they are a great all-star team roster but they lost and now is probably not the best time to complain about the rules.
It’s like the penalty kicks to end ties of soccer games.
MLB also puts a “ghost” runner on second base in extra innings.
Of course the thing everybody is ignoring is that he was specifically asked about it. Hockey News asked him about how Canada handled the 3 on 3 OT rules and he answered that he hated it. It’s not like he jumped out in a vacuum to complain about the rules. I mean he didn’t straight up answer the question, but the question was related to his answer.
And he didn’t, after a similar win earlier.
This Canadian infantry vet used to like Canada too. I can’t stand it, it’s why we in the west want out. Bad.
I said on another article that I’m glad both teams lost. I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the gloating around here, let em suck eggs.
I can sympathize completely. It must be infuriating with the whole Quebec dynamic.
I live in the bluest of blue states, and I feel like an alien in my own country sometimes.
My buddy and i were out in Oshkosh, WI for the annual air show a few years back, and it was the end of a beautiful day...the sun was going down fast, the flight line was emptying out, and we found ourselves standing in a big circle with about a dozen people we didn’t know, from all over America. It was just a chance thing, a bunch of strangers talking, asking all the usual questions such as “Where are you from?” and so on.
Going around the circle, there was someone from Oklahoma, which caused someone to sing out “OOOOk-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain...!” and someone else was from Texas, and a comment came up about how tough the Texas Rangers were...you get the idea. It was kind of fun.
When they asked us, and we said we were from Massachusetts, the entire circle fell silent. There was about a two second pause, and someone very politely asked “Ah. Um...what IS going on up there in Massachusetts?”
I felt like the eight year old Little Leaguer who was the worst player on the team, consigned to playing out in Right Field. If you ever watch those kids, they stand out there, one foot kicking at the ground until there is a good, deep furrow in the grass. They all do it. Whether out of embarrassment, boredom or fear that a baseball might actually be hit in their direction, there are always those furrows in the outfield.
That’s what I was doing there, when that guy in Oshkosh asked that question of me. I was kicking at the tarmac with my toe. For much the same reasons as that eight year old kid in Right Field.
You a very eloquent way of writing and description that I can envision myself standing there lol.
I know the feeling, and it’s funny, I do it here too.
I saw a few RVs with Texas plates once up by Beaverlodge, Alberta and was talking to a guy and he hated Trump and loved Hillary. You can imagine how that conversation went. I told him he’s an embarrassment to his country and to the other Americans there. I told him to get in his RV and step on it so his communist nature wouldn’t spread like disease around there. The others wanted to apologize for that guy, but I said not to bother, we get the same problems.
This from the coach of the Olympic team in their national sport. He should give the silver medal to Sweden with that comment. The irony is he’s representing the thoughts of a nation who voted communists as their rulers in order to prove Trump was wrong about Canada.......
I know that this may sound very odd to you as a Canadian, but this drifting apart of our two counties breaks my heart.
I grew up in a military family, and we traveled around a lot. By the time I was 13, I had circumnavigated the globe with my family. All the friends I had ever known, I lost in time and travel.
When my father retired, our family settled down, and I made new friends. Many of them.
Of special note was one particular family tree, brothers and sisters, cousins, all of them related, their families coming from the Moncton area to America many years ago… where they became American citizens.
That extended family, so proud of their Acadian heritage, became my dearest, of friends. I became their brother. Not an “honorary” brother, but a real brother. We marched together in CYO Band, went camping together, drank together, chased the girls together, went to weddings, birthdays, and funerals together.
My most luminous memories are of visiting his grandmother’s farm on the Maine Seacoast, watching fireflies in a meadow, digging clams, and laying in the middle of a remote Maine road, oblivious to cars that might approach, looking at the brilliant stars. He was born six days after me, and we spent one memorable dark August night after our 18th birthdays, parked by the side of a remote road on the top of the rocky, hilly terrain in the middle of blueberry fields, fiddling with the antenna of a small black and white television to try to watch the Drum Corps International finals. It is a treasured memory.
Their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles accepted me as part of their family. And of that grand extended family, one in particular became my closest brother, my most treasured friend. And my parents accepted him as their son, and my brother.
When I was 17, in the spring of my last year in high school, I decided to join the Navy. But I did not know what to say to my dear brother, to tell him I was going away. I was working on my parents van one night, and my Acadian brother was on my mind. As I fiddled with that cassette deck, I wondered, how could I tell him, at the end of the upcoming summer, I was leaving to join the Navy?
Suddenly, his face appeared in the open door of the van. As I looked at him, wondering how he had appeared there so suddenly, I realized his nose seemed to be flattened out over the side of his face. Before I could say anything, he told me he had been hit in the nose with a hockey puck, and he needed me to take him to the hospital to get his nose fixed. Before I could say yes, what instead came out of my mouth was “Dave...I’m joining the Navy.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, his broken nose forgotten, he blurted out: “F**k it! I’m going with you!”
That was over fifty years ago.
That fall, we went to Boot Camp in Great Lakes together, and both went to Jet School in Memphis together. They they split us up, he went to the West Coast and I went to the East Coast.
But we have spent the last fifty years laughing together, drinking together, meeting our wives and getting married together, taking road trips together, and...growing older together.
Because of this, I came to love Canada for giving me these people, thanking God for putting them into my life.
So you see-this chasm that has developed between our countries cuts me to the bone and saddens me. I wish it were not so. But I feel that even as much as this country of mine that I love so much has changed, I feel that Canada has changed even more dramatically, and that rift has spread and widened.
Thanks for sharing that.
Those moments and relationships are what life is truly all about. God put us here for that reason besides having a relationship with him.
I would encourage you to forget the politics and what you may hear. What you hear on the media and social media and anywhere else is not what I or others here think. We do indeed love our southern brothers and sisters, our real ones. There really is no difference among people who value freedom, and that hasn’t changed.
I’m hoping to plan a trip and to take the wife and kids to show them around the US a bit, I’d love to come by during that time and hear some more. Focus on the good memories, and don’t worry about being sad, we still have your back and I know real Americans still have ours.
What you say is true-I know, because for many people they are just fine if the politics is left aside. LOL, I don’t know when I will be going up to Canada again-last time I went up, I remember thinking that I won’t be going back.
You will probably laugh at this...it is long, so don’t read it if you don’t want to. This is my story of that little trip...which I wrote down to document shortly after it happened, since I have found there are a lot of things that I have forgotten in my life, and I only rediscover them by a chance conversation with my wife or a friend. This is long, but as I said, I write them down for myself, and occasionally share them with others. This is long, but...these are only electrons and bandwidth which are cheap!
And I tell all this in the knowledge that at that time, tensions between the USA and Canada were starting to go poorly, and I have been told that this process I went through may have been retaliatory for visitors from Canada to the USA. It surely seemed more than the activities of bored border officials at night.
To this day, I suspect my name was on some list, or at least I was profiled that way.
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I travelled up to Canada in the late Winter, just by myself, going on a road trip. I had vacation time and was going to lose it because I had so much of it, a nice “First World Problem”. But it was early in March, and my wife could not take any time off. So I just picked Prince Edward Island (PEI) out of a hat, so to speak, and thought it might be interesting scenery if nothing else.
I was a middle aged, white, short hair, glasses, wearing a military Navy veteran hat.
I had been driving for several hours straight (through northern Maine) when I hit the Canadian border. I figured I would stop and use a restroom at the border crossing facility, which was good, because at that point, I had to go pretty badly.
When I got there, they asked me questions at the window, then told me to pull my car to the side and come inside the building. When I came in (this was around 20:00) there was one person in this big room with benches, and when I asked him if I could use the men’s room, he said no. I had to wait.
I had to urinate pretty badly at this time, but felt like I had no option, so I paced back and forth, getting more and more uncomfortable.
After about five minutes, two border guards came out (male and female) and walked me to my car, asking me questions about whether I owned guns, etc. and then proceeded to take the entire car apart. Took my luggage out and completely emptied it, pulled out floor mats, emptied my glove compartment, emptied my trunk, searched the engine compartment, etc
The female Canadian border guard pulls my container of prescription pills out (to save space when going on short trips, I just take what I need and throw them all into one container) and asks what they were, so I explain each one, and she admonishes me and says “You shouldn’t put them together in one container” which starts to REALLY piss me off. They are pulling other stuff out saying “What’s this? Why do you have this?”, etc.
Then, they pull my secured gun safe from under my seat, and ask if I had a gun in it. I said no, I already told them about a half dozen times I did not have a gun with me. They asked me to open it, and for some reason, the key didn’t work. At this point, I had to go so badly I said “Look. Why don’t you get a crowbar and force it open, I really have to go to the men’s room!” But I did finally get the blamed thing open.
All this took about 30-45 minutes, and by the end of it, as anyone who has ever had to go that badly knows, you almost begin to salivate from the discomfort.
I was pretty pissed, and not from the “chipping of the porcelain” that took place when I got to go, either.
Anyway, I found a hotel, and stayed there the night. The next day, I drove up to Prince Edward Island, and it was pretty dead, as anyone who travels up there in the winter knows. But I was just driving around smoking my pipe, and listening to music. No agenda. No destination. I went to the “Ann of Green Gables” house, but it was closed. It was at this time, as I was leaving the closed grounds, that I got the notice that I my phone was being inactivated due to non-payment or something stupid like that. So I called ATT, and found that somehow, I had roaming on. I ended up only paying a few hundred dollars instead of a few thousand, and was glad for it.
I stopped that evening at a Chinese restaurant in PEI, and it was the most gawd-awful, worst Chinese food swill I ever had in my life, and I had ordered a lot of it because I was really hungry. I usually have a wide latitude for what I will eat and even enjoy for Chinese food, and this fell outside those boundaries. I ate very little of it, it was that bad.
I found out that to serve Chinese food up there, you have to have some kind of “special” license. Figures.
So I stayed overnight and drove back the next day. I was still steaming about the Border crossing the day before, and as I drove South past St. John, Nova Scotia, it was a beautiful, sunny day. There was absolutely NOBODY on this major (for them) highway, but I was tooling along, listening to music.
I passed a police car parked off the road, it was sitting there facing the road, and as I went by, I reflexively looked down at my speedometer, spot on the speed limit as I was using cruise control when driving through localities I am unfamiliar with. I absolutely do not speed in those areas.
I looked in my rearview mirror, and to my surprise, saw the police vehicle pull onto the road and accelerate after me, turning on its lights. Puzzled, I pulled over.
The police officer approached my car as I watched him in the side mirror, and asked to see my license and registration. I am past the point in my life where I ask “Why am I being stopped?” I figure at this point, I should just let them do their thing, and go passively along, so I handed them over. The Canadian police officer asked if I had any firearms in the vehicle, and when I gritted my teeth, I forced myself to answer politely in the negative.
He walked back to his vehicle.
As I sat there on the side of this wide, sunny, deserted highway waiting for them to run my plate or whatever it is they do up in Canada when they stop someone, I saw another police car come zooming up, lights on, and pull up behind the first police car.
Great. Now I have two police cars behind me, as I sat on the side of this deserted highway.
The female Canadian cop saw fit to walk up to my car, and asked if I had any weapons in the vehicle. Now, I am really starting to get pissed, but again, politely answered negatively. I almost blurted out “What the Hell is it with you people up here and guns?” but the vision of having a cavity search performed in a cold cell by an enthusiastic non-binary police officer compelled me to just shut my mouth.
The other cop eventually comes back and says “Do you know why we pulled you over?” I answered no, and he said “We got a call from a gas station about forty miles north of here who said you filled your car with gas but didn’t pay for it.”
I am sure I arched my eyebrows at this, as I am not the stealing type, and said “Yes, I filled up, but I definitely went inside and paid for it. Look, I would have no problem driving back and squaring it away with the gas station. There must be some kind of mistake, because I know I paid for it.”
The cop handed me back my documents, and suggested I go straight back and not take any detours. I agreed, and drove forty miles back.
When I parked and walked inside, the guy at the counter saw me, and his face exploded with all signs of happy familiar recognition, and before I could say anything, he said in a breathless torrent “I’m sorry-I told the police what happened, and that I was sure it was a complete misunderstanding and asked them to go easy on you...”
I turned out I had stopped for gas, filled up and gone inside to pay manually. The pump didn’t like my card for some reason, but told me I had to pay inside after I pumped, which I did. When I went inside, I grabbed a soda, and went up and paid for it with my credit card, which it happily accepted. However, I assumed I was paying for the gas as well, and as the guy behind the counter and I chatted amiably about the weather, non-Canadian credit car rejections, and the empty road, I did not get a receipt (Didn’t need one!) and jumped back in my car to drive away.
Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling any love from North of the Border. Don’t feel like going back up to Canada again. I probably never will.
You’re a nicer man than I am.
You didn’t travel to Canada, you travelled to commieland.
We in the west don’t even go that way much. Once you get past Manitoba going east all bets are off. There is no end to the lack of common sense and depravity. Of course all the people aren’t like that there, but most end up moving west that don’t like it. There’s some multigenerational families in those areas that are stubborn to leave though.
Canada customs has a long history of being absolutely useless and a bunch of kids who were picked on too much. I’ve had several run ins. I can go from Abbostford BC, cross at Sumas going south, there can be no traffic because it’s 0400 and the US border guards and I will have a 30 min BS about commies and Clinton’s idiocy etc. I’ll go get some diesel and what not, and be away for 20 mins and then come back. The Canadian guy will ask me the purpose of the trip and I say to breath the free air. He then gets mad and asks what I mean, and I say if you can’t figure it out you have no business sitting there. He then proceeds to get mad and tells me to get lost before he does something he’ll regret. That’s about how it usually goes when I deal with Canadian uniforms. I have zero respect. US side is different. I’ll sit in Denny’s in Washington, PA and sit down with 4 other uniforms state trooper types and we’ll BS about guns, the lack of common sense in Canada, the crappy healthcare in Canada etc.
I went to the Phillipines in 2011 because it was cheap and I was still an apprentice. I was only 2 years out of the military. My buddy was high up in the Air Canada world, so he is able to get me on for almost free, then when first class doesn’t fill me up, he just goes on his laptop and moves me up. When I came back in landed in Vancouver, I had to make a connecting flight to Edmonton, but my parents where there for a short visit in between flights. I didn’t buy anything and said as much to customs and they flagged me red. Next thing you know I’m pulled off into the side room for a detailed search. Some young girl trying to flex her authority. My mother had called and I said hang on mom, some female with a power trip is trying to harass a Canadian infantry vet. She didn’t like that and said if I felt harassed just wait for it. She started getting into harder and I asked if she joined just to harass men because she looks like a man hater. We’re going just about as well as you can expect when I hear my name yelled out from behind me. I turn and see a family friend of my parent’s who had previosly been RCMP and now it turns out he runs the customs in Vancouver as his retirement gig. He scolded the now very upset female and used his card to get me the fast way to my folks. If Mel hadn’t shown up right then, I’d probably still be there.
It’s not just Americans they harass. I’ve had several occasions though where I do interfere. If I’m driving down the highway and see Americans on the side of the road I’m always stopping. I usually do for a few reasons. If they’re in trouble, they are far from home with limited resources, or if a cop pulls over because someone forgot miles isn’t kms or things like that. I once brought an 82nd Airborne guy home to my land in Alberta because he was so lost. I took him home, built a fire outside, we roasted some hamburgers and hotdogs while I devised his plan with him. He couldn’t call his wife or something because of his phone, so he used mine as I had free US calling with my plan. He was leaving Alaska posting for Raleigh area or something like that. NC anyways, I forget exactly and that’s a long drive. Pulled out the old fashioned map and advised where to cross, I said Manitoba go south and then miss Chicago etc. It’s just an example of how we treat our southern brothers despite what media says. If you ever come back up, you make sure to come west, it’s night and day difference.
Wow. This rule is the norm for NHL games, and he’s whining that it’s not “really” hockey? Like a shoot-out is more like a normal hockey game? I rarely comment on other people’s complaints about “fairness” or officiating, etc., because even though it’s often considered poor sportsmanship, I kinda empathize: 30 years and six championships later, I’m still kinda sore about the Yankees-Mariners playoffs. (In my defense, it was their first playoff appearance since 1981.)
But this? This is the dumbest complaint about sports rules I have ever heard, bar none. What a national disgrace.
Meanwhile: There’s a great article about how Canada has become poorer than Alabama. Hell, when I was a kid, Alabama was the third world.
It’s like people who complain about The Electoral College, you knew the rules going in.
That's an awesome story! I am going to take your advice-I have never been up to Canada west of Quebec City...so that is a destination.
One of the things I hate in our modern culture is that it is now difficult to stop to help people on the side of the road, though I will still do it on occasion. And sometimes, it makes for memories that last. And, it is good for the soul! Can't get enough of that.
If you are ever coming out to the New England area, you give me a ping...:)
I’m always armed and I’m 6’2 well versed in unarmed as well. Self confidence helps, but I still can’t foresee everything, the rest I leave to God.
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