The Road to Beijing 2022: Final Olympic Qualifying overview

Here we are once again, just 162 days until the world's best participate - hopefully - in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. It's only been a few months since the IIHF World Championships in Latvia but given the hockey reasons (like the NHL not participating in 2018) and non-hockey reasons (COVID-19 and no fans), it's felt like an eternity since we've been treated to a best-on-best international competition. 

These international events give nations the opportunity to stress test the level of hockey that each produces. National teams earn a grade for the state of the game in each nation.

Each time an international tournament comes around, pundits and commentators spend significant time analyzing the rosters of each of the participating nations, identifying strengths, weaknesses and making predictions about how the tournament will play out. We'll do that as well, but we thought we'd go in a slightly different direction.

Relying on a variety of factors, from player participation to venues and competitive head-to-head, we have put together our preview for the Final Olympic Qualifying tournaments and will predict the three nations that will join Canada, the United States, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and China next February in Beijing.