Underdog Italy hope to beat some 'big guys', says forward Tommy Purdeller

Italy's men's ice hockey team will leverage their underdog status to try and surprise more illustrious opponents at the Winter Olympics for even just one win for a potential quarter-final berth, forward Tommy Purdeller said on Saturday.

Italy will debut on February 11 against Sweden at Milan's newly built Santagiulia arena, where on Thursday Italy's women's team scored a historic first Olympic win.

"We're going to be the underdogs in this tournament, so we are going to bring that mentality into the games, hopefully use it a little bit as an advantage also and see how serious our opponents are going to take us, and hopefully beat some of the big guys," Purdeller told Reuters after a training session.

The 12 men's teams are in three groups, with Italy also competing against Slovakia and Finland in the first stage. Canada and the U.S. are favourites to win the other two groups.

While the first team of each group and the best second-placed team go straight into the quarters, the other eight will compete in knockout games for the remaining four spots.

"We can lose the first three games and there's still one game that can give us a chance to move on," Purdeller said.

"It's a KO game, just one game, everything can happen. And we're going to go in with the right mentality."

Italy are the only side in the tournament with no NHL players in their roster. At their last Olympics appearance in Turin in 2006, they won no games.

Goalkeeper Damian Clara said Italy would benefit from local fan support, as shown in the women's match earlier this week.

"Our first aim is to improve game after game and grow, both as single players and as a whole team," Clara told Reuters after the training session.

"Winning odds are zero if you don't play and we do want to play. Then let's see what happens".

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)