Track your favourite Senators stars as they battle for Olympic glory in Milan. Here's their full preliminary round schedule along with the tournament format.
The men's hockey tournament, the crown jewel event of the Winter Olympics, will get underway on Wednesday morning in Milan, and naturally, most readers here at The Hockey News-Ottawa will be locked in on Team Canada, which opens preliminary play Thursday at 10:40 a.m. ET.
In total, six current Senators players and prospects will suit up in the tournament, giving Ottawa fans plenty of reason to keep the Olympic stream flowing all week.
So here’s the full preliminary-round schedule (EST), filtered for Team Canada games along with the matchups that may feature current Senators players, depending on lineup decisions.
2026 Olympic Men’s Hockey – Preliminary Round Schedule (EST)
Wednesday, February 11
10:40 AM — Finland vs Slovakia (Nikolas Matinpalo)
Thursday, February 12
10:40 AM — Canada vs Czechia
3:10 PM — Denmark vs Germany (Lars Eller, Mads Søgaard - Denmark | Tim Stützle — Germany)
3:10 PM — USA vs Latvia (Brady Tkachuk, Jake Sanderson)
Friday, February 13
6:10 AM — Sweden vs Finland (Nikolas Matinpalo)
3:10 PM — Switzerland vs Canada
Saturday, February 14
6:10 AM — Latvia vs Germany (Tim Stützle)
10:40 AM — Italy vs Finland (Nikolas Matinpalo)
3:10 PM — Denmark vs USA (Lars Eller, Mads Søgaard — Denmark | Brady Tkachuk, Jake Sanderson — USA)
Sunday, February 15
10:40 AM — France vs Canada
1:10 PM — Latvia vs Denmark (Lars Eller, Mads Søgaard)
3:10 PM — Germany vs USA (Tim Stützle — Germany | Brady Tkachuk, Jake Sanderson — USA)
Here's the basic tournament format:
The 12 teams are broken into three groups, and each team will play a three-game round-robin within its group. Teams get 3 points for a regulation win, 2 for an OT/SO win, and 1 for an OT/SO loss.
After the round robin is done, all games are sudden death.
The three group winners and a wild card (the best second-place team) get a bye to the quarterfinals. The other eight teams go to the qualification round to play for the right to advance to the quarterfinals.
From there, it’s a standard knockout format: quarterfinal winners advance to the semifinals, with the winners playing for gold and the semifinal losers meeting in the bronze medal game.
Buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy (and awesome) ride.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
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