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Several NHLers participating at Olympic Qualifying tournament this week

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Cooper Godin
August 23, 2021  (2:12 PM)
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The final three spots for the 2022 Olympic men's hockey tournament will be confirmed this weekend. Twelve nations have been dividing into three groups of four with the winner in each group claiming a berth at February's Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Those groups/nations are:

Group D (Host: Bratislava): Slovakia, Belarus, Austria, Poland.
Group E (Host: Riga): Latvia, France, Italy, Hungary.
Group F (Host: Oslo): Norway, Denmark, South Korea, Slovenia.

On Saturday, the IIHF agreed to pay the insurance for any NHL players wishing to represent their country at the Olympic Qualifiers from August 26th-29th.

After that news was made official, the twelve participating nations began to release their rosters for the tournament, and many of those rosters included current NHLers and some who used to play in the NHL. Let's take a look at the players who will try to get their countries to the Olympic Games.

Slovakia: Christian Jaros (New Jersey), Tomas Jurco (free agent), Marian Studenic (New Jersey), Adam Ruzicka (Calgary).
Belarus: Yegor Sharangovich (New Jersey).
Austria: Marco Rossi (Minnesota).
Latvia: Zemgus Girgensons (Buffalo), Rudolfs Balcers (San Jose).
France: Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (Tampa Bay).
Norway: Mats Zuccarello (Minnesota).
Denmark: Mikkel Bodker (HC Lugano - NL), Alexander True (Seattle), Nikolaj Ehlers (Winnipeg), Frans Nielsen (free agent), Oliver Bjorkstrand (Columbus).
Slovenia: Anze Kopitar (Los Angeles).

As mentioned, the winner of each group will qualify for the Olympics in February. Two of those winners will be placed in a group with Sweden and Finland, while the third qualifier will be in a group with the Russian Olympic Committee, Czech Republic and Switzerland.

Full rosters (8 of 12 nations)
Austria
Belarus
Denmark
France
Latvia
Norway
Slovenia
Slovakia