SOCHI, Russia — Old Men Winter will descend on the Sochi Games this week, leaving the men’s ice hockey tournament with a dusting of gray. The 12-team competition features five players in their 40s, including Petr Nedved of the Czech Republic and Sandis Ozolinsh of Latvia, who bumped into each other in the athletes’ village the other day at that soda fountain of youth, McDonald’s.

So much for getting more mileage out of one’s athletic career through clean fuels. But then, the presence at these Olympics of Ozolinsh, 41; Nedved, 42; his teammate Jaromir Jagr, 41; the Swede Daniel Alfredsson, 41; and the Finn Teemu Selanne, 43, owes little to virtuous planning.

Selanne and Alfredsson considered retirement last summer, and when Selanne squinted at the horizon, Raimo Helminen’s Olympic record of six hockey appearances did not appear within his grasp. “Absolutely not,” Selanne said, laughing. “I was thinking Vancouver in 2010 has to be my last.”

Nedved, seven years removed from the N.H.L. and playing for a club team in the Czech Extraliga, harbored no expectations of becoming the first hockey player with a 20-year gap between Olympics. “It didn’t even cross my mind that this could happen,” he said.