Don't go away, this is funny

 

What you see there is a dude by the name of Denis Donskoy scoring what has to be the most unusual winning goal in the history of hockey- a goal which left the winners losers, the losers confused, the winning/losing coach resigning, and me having to study Google Belarusian to figure it all out.  But let me set the stage.

In the international world, most regular season hockey is winding down.  Hungary and Russia's KHL both open playoffs tomorrow, Poland is already going at it.  But, as I said, Belarus is our story, and they were already the oddest bird of the lot before we get to Sunday.  Unlike everybody else in the world, they cast COVID concerns to the wind and played what was, for them a usual season.  You see, like many European sports, they have a multi-tiered league where if you don't perform, you get kicked to the lower league- in this case, the A League and the B League.  The A is supposed to be a notch above the B- the site Elite Prospects even treats it as 2 separate leagues- but, when it comes to the playoffs...

Well, what happens is the top 8 of the A League earn playoff spots, but teams 5-8 have to play teams 1 through 4 of the B League to make the 'main' playoffs.  And so it was that Brest (the team in the white in the pic), who finished second in the B League at 30-12 faced the A side's Lokomotiv Orsha, 7th in the A League at 14-35.  Despite the disparity, Orsha was the favorites because, well, they were from the A group.

When the series started, this round was going to be like Champions League (standard European) play- two games, team that gets the most goals wins no matter wins or loss.  Brest managed a 4-2 win in game one, so Orsha needed to win by 3 in game two to advance.

They won by FIVE.  And lost.  How, you ask?

Having got on the league website and getting translated by Google Translate, I learned that sometime- possibly in between games 1 and 2- the league changed the rules.  Instead of being two games, best aggregate, it would now be like the regular season: 2 points for a win, one for a tie, most points wins.

Orsha was up 5-0 late, which old rules would have won the series.  But with the new rules, if Orsha held on to that lead after regulation, they would do an overtime winner-take-all, going to a shootout if no one scored.  This is where it REALLY gets stupid.  Brest got a penalty with a about a minute and a half left, and Orsha decided to try NOT to score on the power play in regulation (where it would have been meaningless), but let a half-minute of penalty time go INTO the overtime period, which makes no sense in that this was a game going into a winner take all OT with the score 5-0, and not only didn't the points matter, but the penalty was allowed to overlap!  At the end- and I swear this is true, I watched on video moments ago- Brest tried to score in their OWN net to give Orsha the meaningless goal, but an Orsha player played goalie in front of Brest's goalie to PREVENT it!

Still, they managed to play a scoreless overtime followed by a shootout, where players selected by their coach take turns going in alone against the enemy goalie until one team has an advantage.  In this case, they were even at 1-1 after the standard 5 players for each side tried- and that led to Donskoy's goal above, on the sixth attempt, giving Brest the win despite the official score being 5-1 against them.

So Brest moves on; they'll likely get bounced out next round by top seed Yunost Minsk, the top seed in the tournament. (Although their coach 'loudly' predicted a six-game series victory.)

A typical comment from the players:

- Let me start, - Andrey Filichkin takes the floor for Loko cap. - I would like to apologize to our fans for the match in Brest, which we lost in 10 minutes in the end. He was defining. But today we completely concentrated on the game, won confidently, and really wanted to score in overtime. And shootouts ... yes, such a regulation. Something unfair. On the other hand, both we and the opponent knew about him.

 

And Loko's coach:

 

Igor Zhilinsky with sincere misunderstanding went through not only the format of transitional matches, but the rules of the game in general: “I have been working in Belarus for the third year, but I don’t know what will happen in the championship next year. The regulations change every year: this and that. In my opinion, this is just nonsense . "

 Zhilinsky would leave the presser to go talk to team management after this; he returned soon after, announcing teary-eyed he was no longer the coach.

Igor Valentinovich caught a very sad emotion. It looked like the specialist's eyes were about to fill with tears. He admitted that he would gladly continue to work at Loko, but certain circumstances currently prevent him from doing this: “The last word was one of my interviews, after which I was summoned to the administration” . One thing is clear: if the sides do not find common ground now, then Lokomotiv and the extraliga will lose very seriously.