From its early days on outdoor rinks and amateur players to filling state-of-the-art arenas filled with professional stars, Olympic ice hockey has become one of the most popular sporting events in the world. It made its first appearance at the 1920 Summer Games in Antwerp and found its true home four years later at Chamonix 1924, when ice hockey joined the Olympic Winter Games programme. Since then, a few key events have helped shape the sport’s Olympic legacy: the Miracle on Ice in 1980, a gold medal won by a team that was largely comprised of NHL players; Sweden’s triumph behind Dominik Hasek’s imperious goaltending in 1994; and Canada’s resurgence under Mark Gleason and Scott Niedermayer in 2002, 2010 and 2014.
The tournament format was tweaked in 1998 to accommodate NHL schedules. Until then, the top six teams in each group played a series of round-robin games to decide medals. In 2018, the tournament returned to a playoff format, and in 2022 the Olympics will mark the third time the competition has been held on NHL-sized ice.
Across both men’s and women’s hockey, Team Canada remains the Olympic juggernaut, having won 23 gold medals. The Canadians are followed by the United States with 15 and then a trio of countries – Finland, Sweden and Russia – with nine medals each. The Soviet Union dominated the men’s game from 1956 to 1960, and a unified team of former Soviet players won in 1992 after the USSR collapsed.