It’s time for women’s Olympic hockey!

The 2018 Olympics are upon us, and you’ve decided to become a women’s hockey fan! Or, it’s been four years since you last really paid attention and you need to brush up. Understandable. Welcome, come in, we have exciting hockey for you and we’re hoping you’ll stick around.

How to Watch

Dates: February 10 - 21
Broadcast: CBC, TSN, TSN2, Sportsnet, NBCSN, USA Network
Streaming: Olympics.CBC.ca, CBC Olympics app, NBCOlympics.com, NBCSCN app

Full Schedule with TV channels (all events will be streamed)

Preview

For a quick primer on the teams involved this year, including how they did in Sochi and at last year’s Worlds,  players you should know, and the big games you need to tune in for, check out our previews for Group A and Group B.

We also joined Arvind and Acting the Fulemin on their Back to Excited podcast this weekend.

Tournament Format

The women’s tournament is divided into two groups of four teams, Group A and Group B.

Group A consists of the top four teams in the IIHF world rankings after the 2016 World Championships (USA, Canada, Finland and er... the Olympic Athletes from Russia). Group B includes the fifth ranked team, the host team, and two teams that qualified via the Olympic Qualification tournaments in 2016-17 (Sweden, Unified Korea, Switzerland and Japan).

Each group will play a round robin tournament. A regulation win is three points, an overtime or shootout win is two points and an overtime or shootout loss is one point.

At the end of the round robin, the top two teams in Group A will receive a bye into the semi-finals.

The two quarter-final games will be the third team in Group A versus the second team in Group B and the fourth team in Group A versus the top team in Group B.

The two semi-final games will be the top team in Group A versus the winner of  the second quarter-final and the second team in Group A versus the winner of the first quarter-final.

The winners of the semi-final games will play each other for Gold, and the losers of the semi-final games will play each other for Bronze.

The losers of the quarter-final games and the bottom two teams in Group B will play a playoff series of four games to determine the fifth through eighth placements.

Changes from 2014

Teams are allowed one extra skater and one extra goalie, for a total of 23 players per roster. Each team can ice 20 skaters and two goalies per game. The Unified Korean team is allowed a total of 23 South Koreans and 12 North Koreans, however they are also restricted to 22 players per game, at least three of whom must be North Koreans.

Overtime in the round robin will be five minutes of 3 on 3. No one in women’s hockey plays 3-on-3 overtime so this could get interesting. (Overtime for most playoff games will be 10 minutes of 4 on 4, and the Gold medal game will be 20 minutes of 4 on 4. Shootouts are minimum 5 shooters, which is IIHF standard)

These times are all really late at night, sleep is more important than hockey...

Blasphemy! But we here at PPP have got you covered. We’ll post short updates about each game every day. Follow the 2018 Winter Olympics group on the main page.