Ice hockey tournaments have been staged at the Olympic Games since 1920. The men's tournament was introduced at the 1920 Summer Olympics and was transferred permanently to the Winter Olympic Games program in 1924. The women's tournament was first held at the 1998 Winter Olympics.
The Olympic Games were originally intended for amateur athletes, but the advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis. In 1986, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to allow professional athletes to compete in the Olympic Games starting in 1988. The National Hockey League (NHL) was initially reluctant to allow its players to compete because the Olympics are held in the middle of the NHL season, and the league would have to halt play if many of its players participated. Eventually, NHL players were admitted starting in 1998. The league skipped 2018 and 2022 editions but then agreed to return for 2026 and beyond.
From 1924 to 1988, the tournament started with a round-robin series of games and ended with the medal round. Medals were awarded based on points accumulated during that round. In 1992, the playoffs were introduced for the first time since 1920. In 1998, the format of the tournament was adjusted to accommodate the NHL schedule; a preliminary round was played without NHL players or the top six teams—Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Sweden and the United States—followed by a final round which included them. The tournament format was changed again in 2006; every team played five preliminary games with the full use of NHL players.
The games of the tournament follow the rules of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), which differ slightly from the rules used in the NHL. In the men's tournament, Canada was the most successful team of the first three decades, winning six of seven gold medals from 1920 to 1952. Czechoslovakia, Sweden and the United States were also competitive during this period and won multiple medals. Between 1920 and 1968, the Olympic hockey tournament was also counted as the Ice Hockey World Championship for that year. The Soviet Union first participated in 1956 and overtook Canada as the dominant international team, winning seven of the nine tournaments in which they participated. The United States won gold medals in 1960 and 1980, which included the "Miracle on Ice" upset of the Soviet Union. Canada went 50 years without a gold medal, before winning one in 2002, and following it with back-to-back wins in 2010 and 2014. Other nations to win gold include Great Britain in 1936, the Unified Team in 1992, Sweden in 1994 and 2006, the Czech Republic in 1998, Russia (as OAR) in 2018, Finland in 2022 and the United States in 2026. Other medal-winning nations include Switzerland, Germany and Slovakia.
In July 1992, the IOC voted to approve women's hockey as an Olympic event and was first held at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. The Nagano Organizing Committee was hesitant to include the event because of the additional costs of staging the tournament, but an agreement was reached that limited the field to six teams, and ensured that no additional facilities would be built. The Canadian teams have dominated the event. The United States won the first tournament in 1998 and others in 2018 and 2026. Canada has won all of the other tournaments (2002–2014, 2022).
Inception as an Olympic sport
The first Olympic ice hockey tournament took place at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. At the time, organized international ice hockey was still relatively new. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), the sport's governing body, was created on 15 May 1908, and was known as the Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace (LIHG) until 1947. At the 1914 Olympic Congress in Paris, ice hockey was added to the list of optional sports that Olympics organizers could include. The decision to include ice hockey for the 1920 Summer Olympics was made in January, three months before the start of the Games. Several occurrences led to the sport's inclusion in the programme. Five European nations had committed to participating in the tournament and the managers of Antwerp's Palais de Glace stadium refused to allow the building to be used for figure skating unless ice hockey was included. The IIHF considers the 1920 tournament to be the first Ice Hockey World Championship. From then on, the two events occurred concurrently, and every Olympic tournament until 1968 is counted as the World Championship. The Olympic Games were originally intended for amateur athletes, so the players of the National Hockey League (NHL) and other professional leagues were not allowed to play.
The first Winter Olympic Games were held in 1924 in Chamonix, France. Chapter 1, article 6, of the 2007 edition of the Olympic Charter defines winter sports as "sports which are practised on snow or ice". Ice hockey and figure skating were permanently integrated in the Winter Olympics programme. The IOC made the Winter Games a permanent fixture and they were held the same year as the Summer Games until 1992. Following that, further Winter Games have been held on the third year (i.e. 1994, 1998, etc.) of each Olympiad.
History of events Event2024283236485256606468727680848892949802061014182226YearsMen's tournament••••••••••••••••••••••••••26Women's tournament••••••••8Total events1111111111111111112222222234
Men's tournament 1920 Summer Olympics
The men's tournament held at the 1920 Summer Olympics was organized by a committee that included future LIHG president Paul Loicq. The tournament used the Bergvall System, in which three rounds were played. The first round was an elimination tournament that determined the gold medal winner. The second round consisted of the teams that were defeated by the gold medal winner; the winner of that round was awarded the silver medal. The final round was played between teams that had lost to the gold or silver medal winners; the winner of that round received the bronze medal.
The tournament was played from 23 to 29 April and seven teams participated: Canada, Czechoslovakia, the United States, Switzerland, Sweden, France and Belgium. Canada chose to send the Allan Cup-winning Winnipeg Falcons. The Swedish team consisted of mostly bandy players, many of whom had only started playing hockey in preparation for the tournament. Canadian team manager W. A. Hewitt refereed the first game played, an 8–0 win by Sweden versus Belgium.
Canada won all three of the team's games in the first round and won the gold medal, defeating Sweden in the final and outscoring opponents 27–1. In the two subsequent rounds, the United States and Czechoslovakia won the silver and bronze medals respectively. The Bergvall System was criticized, especially in Sweden, because the Swedish team had to play six games (winning three) while the bronze medal-winning Czechoslovak team only had to play three (winning one). Erik Bergvall, the creator of the system, stated that it was used incorrectly and that a tournament of all of the losing teams from the first round should have been played for the silver medal. Because of these criticisms, the Bergvall System was not used again for ice hockey.
1924–1936 In 1924, the tournament was played in a round-robin format, consisting of a preliminary round and a medal round. The medals were awarded based on win–loss records during the medal round. This format was used until 1988, although the number of teams and games played varied slightly. The Toronto Granites, representing Canada, became one of the most dominant hockey teams in Olympic history, outscoring opponents 110–3, led by Harry Watson, who scored 36 goals., Story #53–Harry Watson scores at will in Olympics . The United States won silver and Great Britain won bronze. Watson's 36 goals remains the tournament record for career goals. He also set the all-time record for career points with 36 (assists were not counted at the time), which stood until 2010.
Eleven teams participated in the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The defending champion Canadian team was given a bye to the medal round and won all of its games by a combined score of 38–0. The Swedish and Swiss teams won their first medals—silver and bronze respectively—and a German team participated for the first time, finishing ninth. At the 1932 Winter Olympics, Canada, represented by the Winnipeg Hockey Club, won gold in a tournament that consisted of four teams that played each other twice. Germany won bronze, the nation's first medal in the sport.
Two days before the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Canadian officials protested that two players on the British team–James Foster and Alex Archer–had played in Canada but transferred without permission to play for clubs in the English National League. The IIHF agreed with Canada, but Great Britain threatened to withdraw the team if the two were barred from competing. To avoid a conflict, Canada withdrew the protest shortly before the Games began. The tournament consisted of four groups and fifteen teams. Great Britain became the first non-Canadian team to win gold; Canada won silver and the United States bronze., Story #15–Great Britain wins Olympic gold .
Challenges to the definition of amateur The Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) revised its definition of amateur and broke away from the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada in 1936, despite the possibility that its players may no longer be eligible for Olympic hockey. Tommy Lockhart founded the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States (AHAUS) in 1937, after disagreements with the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States over international amateurs. The CAHA and the AHAUS joined to form the International Ice Hockey Association in 1940. Its president W. G. Hardy sought for acceptance by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on terms acceptable to the CAHA. CAHA president George Dudley subsequently threatened to withdraw Canada from the Olympics over the definition of amateur. An IOC decision on the matter was postponed when the 1940 Winter Olympics and 1944 Winter Olympics were cancelled due to World War II. In 1947, ice hockey's world governing body, the LIHG, agreed to a merger with the International Ice Hockey Association, was subsequently renamed to the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), and recognized the AHAUS as the governing body of hockey in the United States instead of the AAU.
1948–1952 The IIHF considered whether to have an ice hockey tournament at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, or host a separate Ice Hockey World Championships elsewhere in Switzerland in 1948. Avery Brundage of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) reportedly campaigned to IIHF delegates to vote against inclusion of the AHAUS in the upcoming Olympics. The LIHG passed a resolution that its teams would only play against teams approved by the CAHA and the AHAUS, which was accepted by the Swiss Olympic organizing committee. Brundage threatened that the USOC would boycott the Olympics if the AHAUS team was recognized. The Swiss Olympic organizing committee insisted on the AHAUS team being recognized, despite persistent charges by Brundage that the AHAUS team was "tainted with professionalism". Brundage and the AAU supported a National Collegiate Athletic Association team instead. After bitter negotiations which were not resolved until the night before the Olympics, the AHAUS team was allowed to play in the tournament, but the IOC declared those games would not count in the standings.