Three teams qualified for the men’s ice hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Sunday by winning de facto play-in games on the last day of the final qualifying tournament.
Latvia beat France 5-2, Denmark beat Norway 4-1 and Slovakia beat Kazakhstan 3-1. Latvia and Denmark both fell behind early before getting the offense going, while Slovakia jumped out to a 2-0 first-period lead and played from a position of strength thereafter.
Assuming Russia is allowed to participate, and that’s a massive assumption at this point, these would be the groups:
Group A: Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy
Group B: Finland, Germany, Czechia, Denmark
Group C: Russia, United States, Slovakia, Latvia
However, Russian teams were not allowed to compete at the recently-competed Summer Olympics in Paris, and Russia remains ineligible to participate in IIHF events. If those policies continue, the open spot would likely go to the highest-ranked second-place team based on the final qualifying round. That team is France, who had a better goal difference (+6) than the other two second-place teams Norway (+3) and Kazakhstan (+2). All three second-place teams finished with six points in their group standings.
This created some interesting speculation as the games were ongoing, as France began the day with a round-best +9 but saw that dwindle to +5 at one point, trailing 5-1 while Denmark led Norway 2-1. However, the French managed to stem the tide enough to keep their advantage in that department.
UPDATE: The IIHF has confirmed that if Russia is unable to participate, France will fill the vacated spot in the men's tournament and all 12 teams will be re-seeded according to their 2023 world rankings, except that France will be ranked 12th, behind host Italy. In a previous version of this article, I speculated that France would be seeded ahead of Italy, and I have therefore reversed the two teams in the groups below:
Group A: Canada, Switzerland, Czechia, France
Group B: Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Italy
Group C: United States, Germany, Latvia, Denmark
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