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Olympics

Six Teams Get Head Start in Race for Gold

By HELENE ELLIOTT

How the Olympic hockey tournament will work:

Eight teams will compete for Olympic medals at Nagano, Japan. The United States, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Russia and the Czech Republic are guaranteed berths in the championship round. The two other teams will be determined in a preliminary round to begin Feb. 7.

The winner of preliminary Group A--including Italy, Austria, Slovakia and Kazakhstan--and the winner of preliminary Group B--including France, Germany, Japan and Belarus--will advance to the championship round beginning Feb. 13.

The U.S., Sweden, Canada and the winner of preliminary Group A will be in Group A in the final round. Russia, Finland, the Czech Republic and the preliminary Group B winner will be in Group B. The gold-medal game will be played Feb. 22.

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NHL players will be scattered throughout the field, since 22.3% of the players on opening-night rosters last season were born outside North America.

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Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

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