TOKYO – Group J of the Olympic Pre-Qualification for the 2018 Olympic men’s ice hockey tournament will take place in Sapporo, Japan, 11-14 February 2016.

The proposed game days are 11th, 13th and 14th February 2016.

In the Olympic Qualification the highest-seeded team of each group has the right to host its group and the Japanese Ice Hockey Federation selected the Tsukisamu Ice Arena in Sapporo.

Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido was the first city in Asia to host the Olympic Winter Games in 1972. It also hosted to Asian Winter Games twice and is set to host the next edition in 2017.

The Tsukisamu Ice Arena was also the venue of the 2008 IIHF World Championship Division I Group B where Hungary surprisingly finished first ahead of Ukraine and Japan to earn promotion to the top division for the first time in 70 years. It also hosted several Asia League games last season.

Ukraine will return to the venue as the second-seeded team and also for Croatia it will be a return to Sapporo after less than eight years. Romania is the fourth team to compete in Group J. The winner of the four-team round-robin event will advance to the Final Olympic Qualification held 1-4 September 2016 in three groups to be hosted in Belarus, Latvia and Norway.

The three group winners of the Final Olympic Qualification will join the pre-qualified top-8 nations Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, the USA, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Slovakia as well as host Korea at the 2018 Olympic men’s ice hockey tournament in PyeongChang.

Click here for all groups, teams and venues of the Olympic Qualification.