Ice hockey at the 2002 Winter Olympics

The final standings at the end of the 1999 IIHF World Championship were used to determine the path to the Olympic tournament. The top six places were given direct entry to the first round, places seven and eight were given direct entry to the preliminary round, and all other participants were seeded in qualifying tournaments to fill the remaining six spots. This chart shows the seeding path for all nations, in detail.

	Team
	Canada
	United States
	Russia
4th	Belarus
5th	Sweden
6th	Finland
7th	Czech Republic
8th	Germany
9th	Latvia
10th	Ukraine
11th	Switzerland
12th	Austria
13th	Slovakia
14th	France

These standings are presented as the IIHF has them,[2] however both the NHL an IOC maintain that all quarterfinal losers are ranked equal at 5th.[3][4]

The qualification process, and seedings for the Olympic tournament, came from the final standings of the 2000 IIHF Women's World Championship. The top six nations were given direct entry to the Olympics, the final two spots were contested in a qualification tournament.[5] The nations ranked seven through ten played a round robin in Engelberg Switzerland February 8–11, 2001.

The eight teams were split into two equal divisions. All teams played three preliminary games within their division. Following the completion of the preliminary round, the top two teams from each division advanced to the medal round and competed in a playoff to determine the gold medalist. The other four played classification games.[6] Team rosters were allowed to have between 15 and 18 skaters (forwards and defensemen).

A total of eight national teams competed in the women's ice hockey tournament.