The 10 teams were divided into two groups, with each team playing every team in its group once. The groups were purposefully unbalanced, with the five highest-ranked teams — Canada, the United States, the Czech Republic, Finland and Switzerland — all in Group A. Group B consisted of Sweden, Japan, Germany, France and Italy.
This structure existed 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 advanced to the quarterfinals, with their ranking in group play determining their seed. The top three teams in Group B joined them; the bottom two were eliminated.