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After Canada who is the top hockey nation?

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HC Jets said:
Record of top 10 from every best-on-best tournament (W-L-OTL/T):
'96, '04 World Cup + '98,'02,'06,'10,'14 OG

1. Canada 33-10-2
2. Finland (wow) 26-12-2
3. Sweden 24-8-2
4. United States 23-13-4
5. Russia 23-13-3
6. Czech Republic 17-18-2
7. Slovakia 11-18-3
8. Switzerland 8-7-4
9. Germany 7-19-2 (ouch)
10. Belarus 6-11-3

I know some of these results are old, but after Canada, it is pretty much a pack of 4. Currently, my vote goes to USA though.
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You should include the 05 World Championships. There was no NHL play going on at the time.
 
Sweden cause Hedman, OEL, Karlsson, Kronwall and Klingberg is a beastly defence core.
 
IMO the USA is 2nd. It's close between them and Sweden though.
 
LeSandvich said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hockey#Number_of_registered_players_by_country
Considering this it's surprising that the US is not on par with Canada. Maybe having talent too far spread out is a bad thing when young players grow up and have to compete with less competition.
It could also explain why Switzerland is ahead of Germany despite having a lower total.
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A lot of kids enroll in a wide range of sports but hockey is not ingrained in the culture the same way it is in the United States. My guess is most of those kids are not as serious players as their Canadian counterparts as they focus on other sports and don't generally stick with hockey long-term.
 
I like to base it off the percentage of the population playing it, Canada has most of it covered, also some people who don't even play sports will base hockey number one in Canada.

I would say second is easily Sweden.
Russia
Finland
now I'd say USA. Thing is just in a few states hockey is number one such as Minnesota and maybe Michigan.
 
2: Sweden - With the old stars still good enough and the new stars on D, national results in recent years, I think they are number 2.
3: USA - Steadily growing and will probably knock down Sweden quite soon. But Russia might be number 2 by then.
4: Russia - I think russian hockey is starting to come around and I really like the new stars coming up and Malkin and Ovechkin are not that old.

Sweden - best D
Russia - best O
USA - a bit of both
 
Russia will slowly ascend be number two in my opinion in the not so long term future, since the birth of the KHL and the rebirth of the development model there in the 2000's the next generation of prospects that are coming up will rival anything Canadians send out. Americans have to really battle to grow the game of Hockey, in Russia it's the most popular sport just as in Canada and Finland and with the numbers growing and growing, the future looks very bright.

It's what the game needs, a healthy Canada - Russia rivalry, it's too onesided right now.
 
GlobeHockey said:
Russia will soon be number two, since the birth of the KHL and the rebirth of the development model there in the 2000's the next generation of prospects that are coming up with rival anything Canadians send out. Americans have to fight to grow the game of Hockey, in Russia it's the most popular sport just as in Canada and Finland and with the numbers growing and growing, the future looks very bright.

It's what the game needs, a healthy Canada - Russia rivalry, it's too onesided right now.
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Soccer, Basketball, and Volleyball are all more popular in Russia, just referring to team sports.
 
WarriorofTime said:
Soccer, Basketball, and Volleyball are all more popular in Russia, just referring to team sports.
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Really?

In a country with the same climate as Canada you think Volleyball and Basketball are more popular? Soccer? A sport that Russians have accomplished nothing in.

Compared to Ice Hockey
8 Olympic Gold Medals (2nd to Canada)
27 World Championships (1st)
16 World Juniors Champs.(Tied 1st)

http://news.sportbox.ru/About_porta...ortboxru_vyjasnil_khokkej_popularneje_futbola

Read for yourself what's number 1.

For goodness sakes, 34 million Russians watched the 2015 World Championship final, that's close to a quarter of the country.
 
GlobeHockey said:
Russia will slowly ascend be number two in my opinion in the not so long term future, since the birth of the KHL and the rebirth of the development model there in the 2000's the next generation of prospects that are coming up will rival anything Canadians send out. Americans have to really battle to grow the game of Hockey, in Russia it's the most popular sport just as in Canada and Finland and with the numbers growing and growing, the future looks very bright.

It's what the game needs, a healthy Canada - Russia rivalry, it's too onesided right now.
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Russia must have created an exceptional development model to rival anything Canada can send out, considering fewer players and resources. Can't wait to see those elite defencemen. I feel bad for USA too, they've made tremendous strides in terms of prospects recently but I guess it's a mirage.
 
GlobeHockey said:
Really?

In a country with the same climate as Canada you think Volleyball and Basketball are more popular? Soccer? A sport that Russians have accomplished nothing in.
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Russia went to the semi-finals in the Euro 2008 tournament. The Soviet Union won the European Championships once in 1960 and were the runners-up three times in 1964, 1972 and 1988. All of these accomplishments are way more significant than olympic gold medals in a globally trivial sport like ice hockey, that just a handful of countries (Canada, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia) care about.

There are about 850,000 registered football players in Russia. In ice hockey, the number is ca. 100,000.
 
ZoneEntry67 said:
Toss up between USA, Finland, Russia, and Sweden.

Homer vote for USA though.
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I'd drop Finland just a hair behind the rest of them, but still among the top group of hockey nations (Canada, Russia, Sweden, USA and Finland).

Then the Czech republic heads the next tier, imo.

My list:

Canada
Sweden
Russia/USA
Finland
Czech
Slovakia
 
Lepardi said:
There are about 850,000 registered football players in Russia. In ice hockey, the number is ca. 100,000.
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To be fair every country in the World has more registered players in soccer/football. Even here in Canada we have an outrageous number for soccer.

Doesn't mean it'll ever be the most popular sport.

We shall have an answer to this tomorrow when our Russian ''drugs'' answer lol.
 
HC Jets said:
The way I see it:

Tier 1)
Canada

Tier 2)
USA, Sweden, Russia

Tier 3)
Finland, Czech Republic

Tier 4)
Switzerland, Slovakia

Tier 5)
Latvia, Belarus, Norway, Denmark, Germany

Tier 6)
France, Austria, Slovenia, Kazakhstan

Tier 7)
Italy, Hungary

I agree that Czech Republic is roughly as good as Finland if not better on paper. But the Czechs just haven't had the results in best-on-best tournaments that the Finns have had.
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I feel like this is pretty accurate. Over time (10 years or so) I think a couple of the tiers will merge together (Tier 5/6m 2/3) due to an increase in popularity and then maybe 1 or 2 new country additions.
 
WarriorofTime said:
Soccer, Basketball, and Volleyball are all more popular in Russia, just referring to team sports.
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Basketball and volleyball? No way. Hockey is much more popular.

That said, soccer is the king. By a large margin. Nothing else is remotely close.
 
WarriorofTime said:
Soccer, Basketball, and Volleyball are all more popular in Russia, just referring to team sports.
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There's this odd group among hockey fans, people like you, who have some sort of a compelling urge to downplay the popularity of hockey. I mean, surely you don't actually believe that volleyball and basketball exceed hockey popularity-wise in Russia?
 
Urbanskog said:
There's this odd group among hockey fans, people like you, who have some sort of a compelling urge to downplay the popularity of hockey. I mean, surely you don't actually believe that volleyball and basketball exceed hockey popularity-wise in Russia?
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I studied Russian culture in a course as an Undergraduate and came to that through my research. I suppose the article I found that in may have been mistaken. I think ice hockey is more popular in particular regions than others.
 
WarriorofTime said:
I studied Russian culture in a course as an Undergraduate and came to that through my research. I suppose the article I found that in may have been mistaken. I think ice hockey is more popular in particular regions than others.
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Being such a large country, there's obviously a lot of variation in the sport's popularity regionally. I suppose hockey basically does not exist in say, Chechnya whereas it's highly popular in Omsk for instance. The number of registered players does not say all that much either considering that playing hockey demands far more than any other sport designed for mass participation.
 
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