How overtime, shootouts, standings work in world juniors hockey

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The world junior hockey championship is entering the final day of the preliminary round on Wednesday, Dec. 31 with quarterfinal seeding at stake.

Sweden and the USA each have nine points as they prepare to play each other (6 p.m. ET, NHL Network). The winner will capture the Group A title and play the fourth seed in Group B while the loser will face the third seed.

Canada leads Finland by a point atop Group B. Those teams also play each other on Wednesday (8:30 p.m. ET, NHL Network), with the winner becoming the top seed.

Here are International Ice Hockey Federation rules affecting standings, overtimes and shootouts entering the final day of the round robin.

Standings

Teams get three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime win, one for an overtime/shootout loss and zero for a regulation loss.

The top four teams from each group advance to the quarterfinals. The fifth-place teams (in this case, Germany and Denmark) play in the relegation game, with the loser dropping to a lower tier of competition.

Tiebreakers

Sweden and the USA won't be tied in points after their game. It's possible for Canada and Finland to be tied if the Finns beat Canada in overtime. But since the first tiebreaker is head-to-head competition, Finland would clinch the Group B title in that scenario.

How the playoffs work

Sweden, USA, Slovakia and Switzerland have clinched quarterfinal berths in Group A while Canada, Finland, Czechia and Latvia have in Group B. Seeding is still up in the air.

Quarterfinal matchups on Friday, Jan. 2 are A1 vs. B4, A2 vs. B3, B1 vs. A4 and B2 vs. A3.

The winners advance to the semifinals on Sunday, Jan. 4 with the top remaining team playing the bottom-ranked remaining team and the second- and third-best remaining teams facing each other.

The semifinal winners play for the gold medal on Jan. 5 and the losers play for bronze earlier in the day.

Overtime

If the teams are tied after 60 minutes in the round robin, a five-minute sudden-death overtime will be played at 3-on-3. Unlike the NHL, teams don't change ends for OT.

Overtime in a playoff or relegation game, along with the bronze medal game, lasts a maximum of 10 minutes. It's also 3-on-3, as opposed to 5-on-5 in NHL playoff games.

In the gold medal game, teams play 20-minute 3-on-3 overtime periods, separated by 18-minute intermissions, until someone scores. The USA beat Finland last year in overtime to win the gold medal.

Shootout

If overtime doesn't settle a game outside of the gold medal game, there will be a shootout. The winner of a coin toss gets to choose whether their team shoots first or second. The format differs from the NHL, with five shooters per team instead of three. If nothing is settled after five rounds, then each round is sudden death as in the NHL. But there's another difference. World junior teams can use the same shooters multiple times during the sudden death rounds (think back to TJ Oshie in the 2014 Olympics). They also can change goaltenders.

The shootout in last season's bronze-medal game lasted 14 rounds before Czechia defeated Sweden.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: World juniors hockey rules on OT, standings, shootouts, tiebreakers

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