How the Olympics men's hockey tournament works: Path to gold medal – USA Today

The Olympics men’s hockey tournament is returning to best-on-best as NHL players take part for the first time since 2014.
The NHL-run 4 Nations Face-Off gave a taste of the competition level to expect in Italy. This will be an expanded tournament with 12 teams instead of four. It will be run under International Ice Hockey Federation rules.
Finland is defending champion after winning the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Canada leads the NHL era (1998 to 2014) with gold medals in 2002, 2010 and 2014. The Czech Republic (1998) and Sweden (2006) won the others.
The USA won silver medals in 2002 and 2010. It last won a gold medal in 1980 at the Lake Placid Olympics.
Here is the format for the 2026 Winter Olympics men’s hockey tournament:
The 12 teams are divided into three groups. They are:
Group A: Canada, Switzerland, Czechia, France
Group B: Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Italy
Group C: USA, Germany, Latvia, Denmark
Teams play one game each against the other three teams in their group. Countries get three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime win, one for an overtime/shootout loss and zero for a regulation loss.
After the preliminary round is complete, teams are seeded 1 through 12 under the following criteria:
It’s complicated. Here is the IIHF explainer on the matter.
The top four teams receive byes to the quarterfinals. The 5 to 12 seeds play in a qualifying round on Feb. 17 to see who makes the quarterfinals. The matchups are 5 vs. 12, 6 vs. 11, 7 vs. 10 and 8 vs. 9. The winners advance to the quarterfinals.
The quarterfinals, on Feb. 18, are 1 vs. 8-9 winner, 2 vs. 7-10 winner, 3 vs. 6-11 winner and 4 vs. 5-12 winner.
The winning four teams go to the semifinals on Feb. 20, with the top remaining seed taking on the bottom remaining seeds and the other two teams facing each other.
The semifinal losers play in the bronze medal game on Feb. 21 (2:40 p.m. ET). The winner gets bronze and the loser finishes fourth.
The semifinal winners play in the gold medal game on Feb. 22 (8:10 a.m. ET). The winner gets gold and the loser gets silver.

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