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The men's ice hockey tournament at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, was the 19th Olympic Championship. The Czech Republic, which emerged from the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, won its first gold medal, becoming only the seventh nation to ever win Olympic ice hockey gold. The tournament, held from February 7 to February 22, was played at the Big Hat and Aqua Wing arenas. This was the first Olympics in which the National Hockey League (NHL) took a break allowing national teams to be constructed using the best possible talent from each country. The 1998 Olympic tournament therefore came to be known as the "Tournament of the Century". Unlike previous Olympics where athletes could choose five-star hotel accommodations (such as the USA Men's Basketball team), NHL players were required to stay in the Olympic Village like other athletes. Both Canada and the United States were heavily favoured; they had previously faced off in the final of the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. After a below-expectations performance in the tournament which included only one win, however, several American players trashed their rooms in the Olympic Village and never apologized.〔http://www.canoe.ca/SlamNaganoHockeyMenArchive/feb20_angry.html〕 The Canadian team, despite a strong start in the round robin, failed to play well after losing their semifinal match against the Czech Republic, and played a lackluster bronze medal game, disappointing Canadians who wished for Wayne Gretzky to get an Olympic medal. Nonetheless, Gretzky encouraged all of his teammates to attend the closing ceremony. With political struggles and problems within the Russian hockey program at the time, Russia was missing most of its top NHL stars that refused to participate for political or personal reasons, and were not expected to medal. Among the missing were Nikolai Khabibulin, Alexander Mogilny, Igor Larionov, Viacheslav Fetisov, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Oleg Tverdovsky, Vladimir Malakhov and Sergei Zubov〔http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1998/Czechs-Win-Hockey-Gold/id-1b8a324826480f0298c434dd488e0645〕 Alexei Kovalev missed the tournament due to injury where he was replaced by Sergei Fedorov, who called the president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation and offered to be a substitute, who had not played in nearly a year and was currently in a holdout with the Detroit Red Wings. In large part due to the goaltending of Dominik Hašek, who was considered the best goaltender throughout Olympic play as well as the NHL, the Czech Republic shut-out Russia to win the gold medal. The format of the men's tournament was criticized because the National Hockey League (NHL) clubs would not release their players for the preliminary round. This severely hampered the campaigns of Germany and Slovakia, both of whom failed to qualify for the final group stage. Also the final group stage was criticized as being meaningless since all of the teams qualified for the quarter-finals. The format was eventually changed for the 2006 tournament in an effort to address these criticisms. == Qualification == (詳細はウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ice hockey at the 1998 Winter Olympics – Men's tournament」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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