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.
3 games to decide final 3 (or 4) Olympic spots
The final round of Olympic qualifying began on Thursday with 12 teams vying for the final spots available at the men’s ice hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampazzo, Italy.
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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