WINTER OLYMPICS ICE HOCKEY

OLYMPIC SPORT SINCE 1920

The word hockey comes from old French "hocquet" which meant "stick". The origins of ice hockey are unclear, but it's widely accepted that the British are responsible for bringing hockey to North America. Soldiers stationed in Nova Scotia, Canada, played the earliest games. In 1879, a group of college students at McGill University in Montreal organized competitions and had developed the first known set of hockey rules. The sport migrated south to the United States during the 1890s. The first known hockey games took place between Johns Hopkins and Yale Universities in 1895.

ICE HOCKEY joined the Olympic program at the 1920 Antwerp Summer Games (see also Discontinued Sports) held in early April. There were also the first world championships and were played by seven-man sides, the only time seven-man teams ever to play at the Olympic Games. Four years later, men's hockey made its winter debut in Chamonix with the current standard of six men on the ice at a time and has been part of every winter program.

Canada and the Soviet Union have been the two dominant countries in the history of men's Olympic ice hockey. The two countries have won 14 out of the 19 Olympic tournaments. Canada won the first four Olympic tournaments and six of the first seven, but its streak ended in 1956. The gold medal at the 1952 Oslo Games marked the sixth and last gold medal for Canada. The changing of the guard occurred at the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Games with the emergence of the Soviet Union. The Soviets dominated the competition and won eight of the next 10 gold medals. The only interruptions to the streak were when the United States upset the Soviets in 1960 and 1980 on American soil. After the Albertville Games in 1992, the Soviet Union collapsed and the country's Olympic hockey dynasty ended.

From the 1980s, professional hockey players who had played in the National Hockey League (NHL) were declared eligible to compete in the Olympic ice hockey tournament. These professionals primarily represented Sweden, Finland, and Czechoslovakia at the Olympic Games, as the Canadian and American players were competing in the NHL season. However, at Nagano in 1998, the NHL suspended play for two weeks to allow all NHL players to represent their nations at the Olympic Games. This will probably be repeated in 2002 in Salt Lake City, although negotiations concerning this were still ongoing as of late 1999.

Women's ice hockey began to develop in the 1920s in Canada. By the 1960s, women's ice hockey in Canada became more organized with girls' leagues throughout the nation. In 1982, the Ontario Women's Hockey Association organized the first Canadian national tournament. Concurrently, women's teams and leagues began to develop in the United States and Europe. The first international championship was the World Invitational Tournament in 1987 in Missisauga, Ontario, Canada. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) began to plan a women's world championships. European women's championships began in 1989, and the first women's world ice hockey championships took place in 1990. Women's ice hockey was approved as an Olympic sport in 1992, and debuted in Nagano in 1998. The United States beat rival Canada in the final to claim the first gold medal.

COMPETITION
At the Olympic Winter Games, women compete in an eight-team tournament (women's hockey was added to the Olympic Winter Games program in Nagano in 1998), whereas men compete in a 14-team tournament.

A team must not have more than six players on the ice while play is in progress. Typically, those players are one goal-tender, two defense men, two wings and one centre. A lesser amount of players can be on the ice as a result of penalties; a goal-tender can be replaced by a skater during a delayed penalty or at any other time of the game at a team's risk.

A regular game consists of three 20 min periods, with a 15 min intermission after the first and second periods. Teams change ends for each period. If a tie occurs in a medal-round game in which a winner must be determined, a 10 min sudden-death overtime period will be played subsequent to another 15 min intermission.

VERIFIED FEB 25, 2002

MEN

	GOLD	SILVER	BRONZE
1920*	Canada	United States	Czechoslovakia
1924	Canada	United States	Great Britain
1928	Canada	Sweden	Switzerland
1932	Canada	United States	Germany
1936	Great Britain	Canada	United States
1948	Canada	Czechoslovakia	Switzerland
1952	Canada	United States	Sweden
1956	Soviet Union	United States	Canada
1960	United States	Canada	Soviet Union
1964	Soviet Union	Sweden	Czechoslovakia
1968	Soviet Union	Czechoslovakia	Canada
1972	Soviet Union	United States	Czechoslovakia
1976	Soviet Union	Czechoslovakia	West Germany
1980	United States	Soviet Union	Sweden
1984	Soviet Union	Czechoslovakia	Sweden
1988	Soviet Union	Finland	Sweden
1992	Unified Team	Canada	Czechoslovakia
1994	Sweden	Canada	Finland
1998	Czech Republic	Russia	Finland
2002	Canada	United States	Russia

* Ice hockey was included in the Olympic program at the 1920 Antwerp Games -- the only time the sport was contested in a Summer Olympics.

WOMEN

	GOLD	SILVER	BRONZE
1924-94
1998	United States	Canada	Finland
2002	Canada	United States	Sweden