The Canadian Mens Olympic Hockey team will be going for gold at the Vancouver Olympics Games. The depth of talent on this team is simply unrivaled at this point. That said, nothing is certain until the final game.
The official roster for the Canadian Olympic hockey team has not been chosen yet and it does not look like it will be an easy decision. The Canadian Olympic hockey management team led by Steve Yzerman will have their work cut out for them in trying to decide who to keep and who to cut. The balance of the management team includes the Red Wing's GM Ken Holland, Doug Armstrong of the Blues, Kevin Lowe of the Oilers and Hockey Canada VP Johnny Misley.
There will be twelve countries in the Vancouver Olympic hockey tournament. Of the 12 countries, the favorites will likely be Finland, Russia, USA, Canada, and Sweden. The draws have been completed and the groups in the preliminary round will look like this:
Group A: Canada, USA, Switzerland, Norway
Group B: Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia
Group C: Sweden, Finland, Belarus, Germany
At first glance it looks like the draw works out the best for the Russian hockey team.
The Olympic hockey tournament will start on Tuesday February 16th, with an 18-game preliminary round. At the end of the preliminary round all 12 teams will be ranked in a joint ranking "D". This ranking will be used for seeding the teams in the qualification playoff games. The top four ranked teams (1D, 2D,3D, and 4D) will be given byes into the quarter-final rounds. These top four will also be deemed to be the home team for their quarter-final match.
The qualification playoff (QP)games will be played with the following match-ups (Group E):
5D - 12D (Winner will become E1)
6D - 11D (Winner will become E2)
7D - 10D (Winner will become E3)
8D - 9D (Winner will become E4)
The four winning teams of the QP games will advance to the Quarter-final round to meet the top four teams of the preliminary round. The Quarter-final games will be played with the following match-ups (Group F):
1D - E4 (Winner will become F1)
2D - E3 (Winner will become F2)
3D - E2 (Winner will become F3)
4D - E1 (Winner will become F4)
The Semi-Final games will be played with the following match-ups. The home team will be the higher ranked team as determined at the completion of the Preliminary Round (Group D):
F1 - F4
F2 - F3
The gold medal match will be held on February 28th at 12:15 pm.
This is bound to be a great Olympic Hockey tournament with Sunday, February 21st seeing 4 of the top 5 teams match up against each other.
Canada is a great hockey country and will be hosting a highly competitive Olympic hockey tournament.
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