Host country Norway Teams 12 Runner-up Canada | Dates 12–27 February Champions Sweden (1st title) | |
Venue(s) Fjellhallen
Håkons Hall (in 2 host cities) | ||
The men's ice hockey tournament (women's was added in 1998) at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, was the 18th Olympic Championship. Sweden won its first gold medal, becoming the sixth nation to ever win Olympic ice hockey gold. The silver medal win by Canada extended its all-time Olympic ice hockey lead to 12 medals (extended to 15 medals, for the men's team, as of the 2014 Winter Olympics). The tournament, held from February 12 to February 27, was played at the Fjellhallen in Gjøvik and the Håkons Hall in Lillehammer.
Contents
Medalists
Source:
- Sweden
- Canada
- Finland
- Russia
- Czech Republic
- Slovakia
- Germany
- United States
- Italy
- France
- Norway
- Austria
Qualification
The top eleven nations from the 1993 World Championships qualified directly. To fill the twelfth spot, five nations were selected to compete: The top two from Group B (Great Britain and Poland), the top nation from Group C (Latvia), the best Asian nation (Japan), and Slovakia. This was the first IIHF event for Slovakia.
First round
Twelve participating teams were placed in the two groups. After playing a round-robin, the top four teams in each group advanced to the Medal Round while the last two teams competed in the Consolation Round for the 9th to 12th places.
Group A
Group B
Final round
All times are local.
Gold Medal Game
An exciting Gold Medal game saw Sweden force overtime by tying the score with less than two minutes to go. After a scoreless overtime, the winner was determined by a shootout. The first five rounds saw two players for each side make their penalty shots (Nedved and Kariya for Canada and Forsberg and Svensson for Sweden). In the sixth round, both Nedved and Svensson missed their shots. Forsberg then scored on Canadian goaltender Hirsch to start the seventh round. Kariya took Canada's seventh round shot and was stopped by Swedish goaltender Salo—giving the Swedes the gold medal.
Commemorative Swedish Stamp
In 1995, the Swedish postal service memorialized Forsberg's game winning shootout goal. Because Hirsch would not grant permission for his likeness to be used on the stamp he was 'disguised' by means of changing the color of his sweater and his player number.