Hockey-playing Prime Ministers and Presidents

[Staniowski]

Mark Carney is almost certain to become Canada's next prime minister on March 9th. He was a back-up goaltender for the Harvard Crimson in the 1980s.

Mike (Lester) Pearson played university hockey at the University of Toronto.

Any other hockey-playing national leaders?

Mark Carney on the campaign trail.

Click to read more...

 

[Albatros]

President Alexander Stubb of Finland played for HIFK until U17 or so before running out of talent. Sweden's former PM Stefan Löfven also played a little bit as a kid.

 

[CMitchelli]

Mark Carney is almost certain to become Canada's next prime minister on March 9th. He was a back-up goaltender for the Harvard Crimson in the 1980s.

Mike (Lester) Pearson played university hockey at the University of Toronto.

Any other hockey-playing national leaders?

View attachment 976096
Mark Carney on the campaign trail.

Did the almost certain next Prime Minister lose a finger on his catching hand?

 

[alko]

You know, that this topic will end in Russia, right?

 

[gretzkyoilers]

You know, that this topic will end in Russia, right?

 

[jigglysquishy]

Stephen Harper played hockey as a youngster, before eventually writing a hockey book. I remember the joke in about 2004-2007 timeframe that Harper played right wing as a kid.

 

[sr edler]

Harper's hockey book is really good from what I've glanced of it, and Eric Zweig said it was good too (I think he did some editing) and I trust him. It looked thoroughly researched.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Harper's hockey book is really good from what I've glanced of it, and Eric Zweig said it was good too (I think he did some editing) and I trust him. It looked thoroughly researched.

It's good but is very dry. It's the exact book I would have expected Harper to write.

 

[Crosby2010]

I mean, we all have seen the clips of Putin. I do have to laugh at it a bit because everyone is petrified of defending him. He gets a lot of room out there when he plays. And whenever he scores the defense always does a last effort lunge towards him at least feigning that they were trying to get him.

John Kerry was never President, but he did and could play hockey. I can remember an article in 2004 in the Hockey news about it.

I'll bet Harper could play, not sure what level he would have gone to. We all know about his aforementioned book.

It surprises me that Canadian leaders didn't play hockey at the level you'd expect.

 

[Albatros]

Putin and Lukashenko are nothing but posers, they never played organized hockey at any level beyond their orchestrated photo sessions with pros while in office.

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

One thing Ive wondered about this, why Putin has that intense interest in hockey specifically. As much as Russia seems like a hockey centric nation to us as canadians, from meeting Russians in person my experience was that they often seem 50/50 as likely to be soccer fans more than hockey.

 

[MadLuke]

I would imagine Jean Chrétien not too shy to drop the glove... apparently:

The hockey prime minister

No PM has shown Stephen Harper's passion for the national game - or used it to such advantage

www.theglobeandmail.com

Jean Chrétien was quite athletic. A good golfer and a decent hockey player, he was quick with the elbows and liked to rough it up. Conservatives were of the view that he governed with concussion-like symptoms.

Pearson's apparently was an high level all around athlete.

 

[Albatros]

One thing Ive wondered about this, why Putin has that intense interest in hockey specifically. As much as Russia seems like a hockey centric nation to us as canadians, from meeting Russians in person my experience was that they often seem 50/50 as likely to be soccer fans more than hockey.

I mean, he's been posing in like half the Olympic sports and even beyond that like formula racing. But he broke his collarbone while playing soccer in Finland for a St. Petersburg city administration team before he made it big in politics and I think was never particularly fond of the sport.

 

[kaiser matias]

It's good but is very dry. It's the exact book I would have expected Harper to write.

It's very much an academic book: stiff language, obscure topic, footnotes, and citations to old material no one will look into. As someone who enjoys that type of thing (my book shelves are full of that type of book) I found it great, and it's something Harper should do more of, as he clearly has a talent and passion for it.


As for the topic at hand:

He wasn't a prime minister or president, but former Canadian Governor-General David Johnston was captain of Harvard. He also considered going to a Bruins training camp, but went to Cambridge University instead.

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

One thing Ive wondered about this, why Putin has that intense interest in hockey specifically. As much as Russia seems like a hockey centric nation to us as canadians, from meeting Russians in person my experience was that they often seem 50/50 as likely to be soccer fans more than hockey.

I’m wondering if it’s similar to Sweden in a way, that while soccer remains the more practiced, accessible and popular sport, hockey is one were both countries historically have had the greater and more successful teams internationally, and probably the more iconic individuals, more often than not.

The average Russian will perhaps tune into more Fifa World Cup games than Olympic hockey matchups, but they’ve seen more title matchups with Russian hockey teams. Ovechkin is a superstar in his game. If Andrei Arzhavin had remained relevant on the world stage beyond 2008, perhaps we’d have seen a couple more pictures of Putin schmoozing with their football team.

 

[sr edler]

This is not supposed to be a political post, but I think Ukraine is arguably a better football nation than Russia, even going back into the late Soviet-era, while not being good at hockey at all, so there seems to be somewhat of a cultural discrepancy there (for lack of a better term). But Russia's got one Ballon d'Or winner (Yashin) whereas Ukraine got three (Belanov, Blokhin and Shevchenko), and Dynamo Kiev's been a borderline powerhouse at times.

 

[MeHateHe]

Pearson's apparently was an high level all around athlete.

Pearson played for the Oxford hockey team that won the first Spengler Cup in 1923. Carney also played for Oxford, somewhat later than that.

Ken Dryden was nearly Prime Minister, by which I mean he finished a distant fifth in the first ballot of the 2006 federal leadership vote, and then last in the subsequent ballot and was dropped.

 

[Voight]

One thing Ive wondered about this, why Putin has that intense interest in hockey specifically. As much as Russia seems like a hockey centric nation to us as canadians, from meeting Russians in person my experience was that they often seem 50/50 as likely to be soccer fans more than hockey.

He grew up in St Petersburg, which had a fairly decent Soviet League team (it was the "other" Army team along with CSKA) so maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[carjackmalone]

Ronald Reagan

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

This is not supposed to be a political post, but I think Ukraine is arguably a better football nation than Russia, even going back into the late Soviet-era, while not being good at hockey at all, so there seems to be somewhat of a cultural discrepancy there (for lack of a better term). But Russia's got one Ballon d'Or winner (Yashin) whereas Ukraine got three (Belanov, Blokhin and Shevchenko), and Dynamo Kiev's been a borderline powerhouse at times.

I think I’ve read about that too, that many Soviet footballers were developed in Ukraine. And indeed, I looked at Wikipedia and 7 out of 11 Soviet players at the 1988 Euros were Ukrainians. Apparently several chose to play for Russia after the USSR collapsed too. Even Oleg Salenko, who led the 1994 World Cup in goals scored, was half Ukrainian and played for Ukraine in their first FIFA recognized friendly, before switching to Russia. Tbf, he’s probably only Russian I could name from the 1994 World Cup.

Haven’t dug into the history too much, but it seems like the Soviet Union to a certain extent spread out their sports focuses between the republics, which has defined how I think of the present countries and sports. Russia and hockey, but also Latvia and Kazakhstan. Basketball with the Baltics, but Lithuania in particular. Wrestling in Central Asia and Mongolia… Soviet satellite states as well seem to have invested in certain sports for whatever reason. Like, Hungary and water sports, why did water polo become a thing there?

 

[gretzkyoilers]

I would imagine Jean Chrétien not too shy to drop the glove... apparently:

The hockey prime minister

No PM has shown Stephen Harper's passion for the national game - or used it to such advantage

www.theglobeandmail.com

Jean Chrétien was quite athletic. A good golfer and a decent hockey player, he was quick with the elbows and liked to rough it up. Conservatives were of the view that he governed with concussion-like symptoms.

Pearson's apparently was an high level all around athlete.

Jean playing goalie for the parliament team ^^^