The men's tournament in ice hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, from February 16–28, 2010. Games were hosted at two venues – Canada Hockey Place (renamed from "General Motors Place" for the Olympics due to IOC rules disallowing host venues to be named after non-Olympic sponsors) and UBC Thunderbird Arena. These Olympics were the first to take place in a city with an National Hockey League team since the NHL players were introduced in 1998, which meant players on the Vancouver Canucks who were competing in the Olympics were playing in their home arena: Roberto Luongo for Canada, Ryan Kesler for the United States, Pavol Demitra for Slovakia, Sami Salo for Finland, Christian Ehrhoff for Germany, and Daniel and Henrik Sedin for Sweden.
Teams from twelve national hockey associations competed, seeded into three groups for the preliminary round. The tournament consisted of 30 games: 18 in the preliminary round (teams played the other teams in their own group); 4 qualification playoff games; 4 quarterfinal games; 2 semifinal games; 1 bronze medal game; and 1 gold medal game.
During the tournament, Teemu Selänne of Finland became the all-time leader for points scored in the Olympics. He notched an assist in his second game of the tournament for 37 career points, surpassing Valeri Kharlamov of the Soviet Union, Vlastimil Bubník of Czechoslovakia, and Harry Watson of Canada. Sweden's goaltender Henrik Lundqvist set a modern-day Olympic shutout streak record of 172 minutes and 34 seconds, continuous from the final of the gold medal game of the 2006 Olympics until Sweden's quarterfinal against Slovakia.
The tournament was won by Canada for the record eighth time (one more than the Soviet Union), which defeated the United States in overtime in the gold medal game. Canada's loss to the U.S. in the preliminary round of the tournament remains, as of the conclusion of the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, their most recent defeat in non-exhibition best-on-best international men's play.
Qualification
Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States qualified as the top nine teams in the IIHF World Ranking. Germany, Latvia and Norway qualified via the qualification tournament for teams ranked 10th through 30th.
Rosters
Preliminary round
Points to each team were awarded as follows: 3 points for a win at the conclusion of regulation time 2 points for an overtime or shootout win 1 point for an overtime or shootout loss 0 points for a loss at the conclusion of regulation
If two or more teams were tied in points, the following tiebreaker criteria were used: points earned in games involving only tied teams goal difference in games involving only tied teams goals scored in games involving only tied teams goal difference in all group games goals scored in all group games better 2009 IIHF World Ranking position
If a criterion left only two teams tied, then those teams were ranked based on their head-to-head result.
Group A
All times are local (UTC−8).
Group B
All times are local (UTC−8).
Group C
All times are local (UTC−8).
Ranking after preliminary round
Playoff round
Following the completion of the preliminary round, all teams were ranked 1D through 12D. To determine this ranking, the following criteria were used in the order presented:
higher position in the group
higher number of points
better goal difference
higher number of goals scored for
better 2009 IIHF World Ranking.
Bracket
† Indicates overtime victory
‡ Indicates shootout victory
Qualification playoffs
The top four ranked teams (1D–4D) received byes to and were deemed the home team in the quarterfinals as they were seeded to advance, with the remaining eight teams (5D–12D) playing qualification playoff games as follows:
vs. (winner re-ranked as E1) vs. (winner re-ranked as E2) vs. (winner re-ranked as E3) vs. (winner re-ranked as E4).
If the score remained even after regulation, a 10-minute overtime period was played. If neither team scored, a shoot out of three rounds of penalty shots decided the winner. The four winners of these qualification playoff games advanced to the quarterfinal round, while the losers of the qualification playoff games received a final ranking of 9 through 12 based on their preliminary round ranking.
All times are local (UTC−8)