News > Sudden death in a hockey match: Everything you need to know

Sudden death in a hockey match: Everything you need to know

To know what ‘sudden death’ means in a shootout, let’s first understand the format of a penalty shootout and how it is executed. A shootout in hockey is required as a tiebreaker when the teams end up scoring the same number of goals or no goals in a knockout match are scored where a winner needs to be declared in order to progress in the tournament. If the above still fails to decide a winner and the scores remain level after five shootout attempts each, then the game moves to a sudden-death shootout.