Hockey first appeared at the Olympic Winter Games in 1920. At that time, the game was played outdoors with seven players per team and no forward passes. Today, the Olympic tournament follows the IIHF rules. In 1970, helmets became mandatory, and in 1992, the shootout was added to the medal games to decide a winner when tied after three minutes of sudden death overtime.
For the first 36 years of Olympic ice hockey, the hammer and sickle was the symbol of Soviet dominance. But at the 1980 Calgary Olympics, a young American captain named Mike Eruzione made a decision that will forever change the course of ice hockey history.
In the semifinals against the Soviet Union, the Americans were trailing late in the third period of a 3-3 tie. With ten minutes left, Eruzione skated into the Soviet zone, used a defenseman as a screen, and scored a wrist shot past the goalie for the win. The victory, known as the Miracle on Ice, put the U.S. into the final against Sweden where they went on to win gold.
In 1994, at the Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, the teams of Canada and Sweden were tied after regulation, but neither had won a gold medal so far in the tournament. The game was decided in the first-ever shootout, where players from each team face off against each other on a penalty shot. Each player takes one shot from each zone, and the team that scores the most wins the gold medal.