Ice hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics – Men's tournament



The men's tournament in ice hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 16 to 28 February 2010. Games were hosted at two venues – Canada Hockey Place (renamed from "General Motors Place" for the Olympics) and UBC Thunderbird Arena. It was the fourth time since the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano that National Hockey League players have been eligible to compete. These Olympics were the first to take place in a city with an NHL team since then, which meant players on the Vancouver Canucks who were competing in the Olympics were playing in their home arena.

Teams from twelve national hockey associations competed, seeded into three groups for the preliminary round. The tournament consisted of 30 games: 18 in the preliminary round (teams played the other teams in their own group); 4 qualification playoff games; 4 quarterfinal games; 2 semifinal games; 1 bronze medal game; and 1 gold medal game.

During the tournament, Teemu Selänne of Finland became the all-time leader for points scored in the Olympics. He notched an assist in his second game of the tournament for 37 career points, surpassing Valeri Kharlamov of the Soviet Union, Vlastimil Bubnik of Czechoslovakia, and Harry Watson of Canada. Sweden's goaltender Henrik Lundqvist set a modern-day Olympic shutout streak record of 172 minutes and 34 seconds, continuous from the final of the gold medal game of the 2006 Olympics until Sweden's quarterfinal against Slovakia.

In the gold medal game, Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal seven minutes and forty seconds into overtime for Canada in a 3–2 win against the United States.

Final rankings
The final standings of the tournament according to the IIHF:

Qualification
Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States qualified as the top nine teams in the IIHF World Ranking. Germany, Latvia and Norway qualified via the qualification tournament for teams ranked 10th through 30th.

Rosters

 * Group A
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 * Group B
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 * Group C
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Preliminary round
Points to each team are awarded as follows:
 * 3 points for a win at the conclusion of regulation time
 * 2 points for an overtime or shootout win
 * 1 point for an overtime or shootout loss
 * 0 points for a loss at the conclusion of regulation

If two or more teams are tied in points, the following tiebreaker criteria will be used:
 * points earned in games involving only tied teams
 * goal difference in games involving only tied teams
 * goals scored in games involving only tied teams
 * goal difference in all group games
 * goals scored in all group games
 * better 2009 IIHF World Ranking Position

If a criterion leaves only two teams tied, then those teams will be ranked based on their head-to-head result.

Group A
All times are local (UTC-8).


 * Standings

Group B
All times are local (UTC-8).


 * Standings

Group C
All times are local (UTC-8).


 * Standings

Playoff round
Following the completion of the preliminary round, all teams will be ranked 1D through 12D. To determine this ranking, the following criteria will be used in the order presented:


 * higher position in the group
 * higher number of points
 * better goal difference
 * higher number of goals scored for
 * better 2009 IIHF World Ranking.

Draw

 *  † Indicates overtime victory
 *  ‡ Indicates shootout victory

Qualification playoffs
The top four ranked teams (1D–4D) received byes to and were deemed the home team in the quarterfinals as they are seeded to advance, with the remaining eight teams (5D–12D) playing qualification playoff games as follows:


 * vs. (winner re-ranked as E1)
 * vs. (winner re-ranked as E2)
 * vs. (winner re-ranked as E3)
 * vs. (winner re-ranked as E4).

Should the score remain even after regulation an overtime period of at most ten minutes is to be played. Should neither team score, a shoot out of three rounds of penalty shots decides the winner. The four winners of these qualification playoff games advanced to the quarterfinal round, while the losers of the qualification playoff games received a final ranking of 9 through 12 based on their preliminary round ranking.

All times are local (UTC-8)

Quarterfinals
Teams seeded D1 to D4 are the home teams. Should the teams be tied after 60 minutes of regulation, an overtime period of at most ten minutes would decide the winner immediately upon the next goal. If the game remains tied after the overtime period, an penalty shot competition determines the winning team.

Following the quarterfinal games, the winning teams will be re-ranked F1 through F4, with the winner of 1D vs. E4 re-ranked as F1, the winner of 2D vs. E3 re-ranked as F2, the winner of 3D vs. E2 re-ranked as F3, and the winner of 4D vs. E1 re-ranked as F4. The losers of the quarterfinal round games will receive a final ranking of 5 through 8 based on their preliminary round ranking.

All times are local (UTC-8).

Semifinals
All times are local (UTC-8).

Bronze medal game
All times are local (UTC-8).

Gold medal game
(The losing team is awarded the silver medal.)

The referees for the final were Bill McCreary (Canada) and Dan O'Halloran (Canada), while the linesmen were Stefan Fonselius (Finland) and Jean Morin (Canada).

All times are local (UTC-8).

Television ratings
The gold medal game drew a big hockey audience in both Canada and the United States.

In Canada, the game drew an average 16.6 million viewers while 26.5 million Canadians watched at least part of the game. Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium claims that 22 million people – or two thirds of the Canadian population – were watching the gold medal game when Sidney Crosby scored in overtime, making the game the most-watched television broadcast in Canadian history. However, a new ratings system intended to better track out-of-home viewership was only implemented in August 2009, making it difficult to accurately compare these results with ratings prior to that date – specifically, the 2002 Canada-USA gold medal game in Salt Lake City, the record holder under the previous system. There was some speculation that the final game of the 1972 Summit Series had as many as 18 million viewers, although recently-recovered Nielsen ratings archives indicate that only 4.255 million Canadians watched that game live.

In the United States, NBC said that the game was the most-watched hockey game in the U.S. in 30 years, drawing 27.6 million, the largest since the United States-Finland game at the 1980 Olympics.

Leading scorers
Rankings based upon points

Hat trick scorers
 * 🇨🇦 Jarome Iginla Canada
 * 🇳🇴 Tore Vikingstad Norway

Leading goaltenders
Goalkeepers with 40% or more of their team's total minutes.

Shut-outs


 * 🇨🇦 Roberto Luongo Canada
 * 🇫🇮 Niklas Bäckström Finland
 * 🇫🇮 Miikka Kiprusoff Finland
 * 🇸🇰 Jaroslav Halák Slovakia
 * 🇸🇪 Henrik Lundqvist Sweden (2)
 * 🇺🇸 Ryan Miller United States

Awards
The United States' Ryan Miller was named the most valuable player and received the Directorate Award for best goaltender of the tournament. Directorate Awards also went to Brian Rafalski (United States) for best defenceman, and to Jonathan Toews (Canada) for best forward.

The tournament all-star team was voted on by the international media at the conclusion of the event. The following players were named:

Officials
The games were officiated, according to the IIHF rules, by the following: