Playoff in the context of "Sport"

The Victoria Skating Rink was an indoor ice skating rink located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Opened in 1862, it was described at the start of the twentieth century to be "one of the finest covered rinks in the world". The building was used during winter seasons for pleasure skating, ice hockey and skating sports on a natural ice rink. In summer months, the building was used for various events, including musical performances and horticultural shows. It was the first building in Canada to be electrified.

The rink hosted the first-ever recorded organized indoor ice hockey match on March 3, 1875. The ice surface dimensions were confined to the distance between Drummond and Stanley Streets- which came to define the standard for today's North American ice hockey rinks. It was also the location of the first Stanley Cup playoff games in 1894 and the location of the founding of the first championship ice hockey league, the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada in 1886. Frederick Stanley, the donor of the Stanley Cup, witnessed his first ice hockey game there in 1889. In 1896, telegraph wires were connected at the Rink to do simultaneous score-by-score description of a Stanley Cup challenge series between Montreal and Winnipeg, Manitoba teams, a first of its kind.

Many sports playoffs and knockout tournaments include a third place playoff, third place match, bronze medal game, or consolation game to decide which competitor or team will be credited with finishing third and fourth. This game is typically competed by the competitors or teams that lost in the semi-finals of the tournament that they competed in. Some tournaments may use the third place playoff to determine who wins the bronze medal, while other tournaments need to hold a third place playoff for seeding purposes if three or all four semi-finalists advance to another tournament. Social psychology studies have found that bronze medalists who had won a third place playoff were significantly happier than silver medalists who had lost a championship final.

In tournaments that do not award medals or have the third place finisher advance to something else, a third place playoff is a classification match that serves little more than as a consolation to the losing semi-finalists. A consolation game also allows teams to play more than one game after having invested time, effort and money in the quest for a championship. Third place playoffs held as such consolation games are subject to debate. Many sports tournaments do not have a third place playoff due to a lack of interest. It has been criticised by some who feel that the match serves little purpose, but others see this game as an occasion for the losing semi-finalists to salvage some pride. How seriously the competitors or teams take a third place consolation game may also be mixed: a heavily favoured team that lost in an upset in the semi-final round may not have as much incentive to win as would a "Cinderella" team who was not expected to advance that far.

The Gagarin Cup (Russian: Кубок Гагарина, Kubok Gagarina) is the trophy presented to the winner of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) playoffs, and is named after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. The Cup was supposedly named after Gagarin because the last possible game of the inaugural KHL season took place on April 12, the anniversary date of Gagarin's flight.

After the end of the KHL's regular season, sixteen teams participate in the playoffs. The round of 16 and quarter-finals were a best-of-five series during the first season, and the semi-finals and finals were a best-of-seven series during the first season. Conferences were established for the second season. Conference quarter-finals are a best-of-five series while the conference semi-finals, conference finals and Gagarin Cup finals are a best-of-seven series. The winner of the final best-of-seven series receives the Gagarin Cup. It has been reported that the Cup weighs 18 kg (40 lbs), making it heavier than the NHL's Stanley Cup.

A podium sweep is where a team or nation comes in first, second and third, such as at the Olympics, and wins all available medals, which are recognized by a podium ceremony. The word sweep is commonly used in North American sports such as baseball, basketball, cricket and ice hockey which have playoff or regular season series, to describe a situation where one team wins all the games in a series, for example, with a 4–0 victory in a best-of-seven series.

The term is also used in a broader sense when a country, team or athlete wins all possible prizes in a competition. At the highest level, that would be when one nation wins all the medals in the Olympics.