Olympic ice hockey is a short, intense international tournament with group play first, then a win-or-go-home knockout round for the medals.

Basic tournament format

  • Both men’s and women’s tournaments are played during the Winter Olympics, under international (IIHF) rules.
  • The men’s event currently has 12 teams in three groups of four playing a round-robin (each team plays everyone in its group).
  • The women’s event currently has 10 teams in two groups of five, again round-robin inside each group.

How teams advance

  • In the men’s event, group winners plus the best remaining team (by points and tiebreakers) get a bye, and the rest go into qualification games to fill out the quarterfinals.
  • In the women’s event, all five teams in the top group reach the quarterfinals, while only the top three teams in the lower group advance.
  • After that it’s single elimination: quarterfinals → semifinals → gold‑medal game, with the semifinal losers playing for bronze.

Points and standings in group play

  • Win in regulation: 3 points.
  • Win in overtime or shootout: 2 points.
  • Loss in overtime or shootout: 1 point.
  • Loss in regulation: 0 points.

If teams are tied on points, tiebreakers usually go in this order:

  • Group position, then total points, then goal difference, then goals scored, and then IIHF world ranking if needed.

Game format and key rules

  • Games are three 20‑minute periods of stop‑time hockey, with a 15‑minute intermission between periods.
  • Rosters are slightly bigger than typical league games: up to 25 players for men (22 skaters, 3 goalies) and 23 for women (20 skaters, 3 goalies).
  • Olympic hockey uses the international rink and IIHF rulebook, which tends to be stricter on dangerous hits and fighting than the NHL; fighting results in ejection rather than just a major penalty.

Overtime and shootouts

Overtime changes depending on the stage of the tournament.

  • Group stage:
    • If tied after regulation, teams play a short sudden‑death 3‑on‑3 overtime (often 5 minutes).
* If still tied, they go to a shootout, typically best‑of‑five shooters.
  • Knockout rounds (before the final):
    • Overtime is longer (for example 10 minutes of 3‑on‑3), then a shootout if still tied.
  • Gold‑medal game:
    • Played like classic playoff hockey: full 5‑on‑5 sudden‑death overtime periods until someone scores, with no shootout deciding the gold.

A player serving a penalty that would extend beyond overtime cannot take part in the shootout.

How this feels as a viewer

Olympic hockey compresses what feels like a whole season’s drama into about two weeks, with national teams, small sample sizes, and every game heavily affecting medal chances. A typical journey you’ll see on TV is: a few group games to sort out seeding, a tense quarterfinal where a favorite can be knocked out early, then a semifinal heartbreaker for one side and a high‑pressure gold‑medal game that can swing on one mistake or one brilliant play.

Bottom note: Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.