These Olympics were the first to take place in a city with a National Hockey League team since the NHL players were introduced in 1998, which meant players on the Vancouver Canucks who were competing in the Olympics were playing in their home arena: Roberto Luongo for Canada, Ryan Kesler for the United States, Pavol Demitra for Slovakia, Sami Salo for Finland, Christian Ehrhoff for Germany, and Daniel and Henrik Sedin for Sweden.

[2][3] He notched an assist in his second game of the tournament for 37 career points, surpassing Valeri Kharlamov of the Soviet Union, Vlastimil Bubník of Czechoslovakia, and Harry Watson of Canada.

[4] The tournament was won by Canada for the record eighth time (one more than the Soviet Union), which defeated the United States in overtime in the gold medal game.

Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States qualified as the top nine teams in the IIHF World Ranking.

The gold medal game was a rematch of the men's tournament in ice hockey at the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City, United States.

In addition, Chris Pronger, Scott Niedermayer, Martin Brodeur and Jarome Iginla of Team Canada were returnees from the 2002 gold-winning squad and collected their second gold medal.

For USA, the goal scorers were Ryan Kesler and Zach Parise, the latter tying the game with 25 seconds left, forcing it to go into sudden death.

Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal off a pass from Jarome Iginla, seven minutes and forty seconds into overtime for Canada, gaining victory over the United States.

[5] The puck has been sent to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto;[6] in Canadian media, Crosby's goal has been compared in significance to the ones scored by Paul Henderson in the 1972 Summit Series and Mario Lemieux in the 1987 Canada Cup.

[14] Shutout posters United States' Ryan Miller was named the most valuable player and received the Directorate Award for best goaltender of the tournament.

Patrick Kane would become the fourth player to win both Olympic silver medal and Stanley Cup in the same year, following Red Wings Sergei Fedorov in 1998, and Chris Chelios and Brett Hull in 2002.