The 10 teams are divided into two groups, with each team playing every team in their group once. The groups are purposefully unbalanced, with the five highest-ranked teams — Canada, the United States, the Czech Republic, Finland and Switzerland — all in Group A. Group B consists of Sweden, Japan, Germany, France and Italy.
This structure exists to create more competitive games in group play, given the significant talent gap between the favorites (especially Canada and the United States) and the rest of the field. All teams in Group A advance to the quarterfinals, with their ranking in group play determining their seed. The top three teams in Group B join them; the bottom two are eliminated.
There are no ties in Olympic hockey. Non-medal games proceed to a shootout if no team scores during one period of 3-on-3 sudden-death overtime. Wins in regulation are worth three points; wins in overtime are worth two points and losses in overtime are worth one point.
In their respective groups, teams are ranked by total points, with head-to-head results breaking two-way ties.