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Why is Norway not good at hockey compared to Sweden/Finland?

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Great! Now you've done it! You have made me participate in a pissing match on hfboards! :laugh:

No, seriously, Norvegians are awesome, never said anything else ;)
 
umbertovanek said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_skiing_at_the_Winter_Olympics

Austria has 4, in letters, FOUR times as many medals in alpine skiing than Norway. And that's not even counting ski jumping, where Austrians have been dominating quite a bit over the last couple of years.

Look, you're a great nation when it comes to overall winter sports, especially nordic skiing, nobody denies that, but your claim that Norway is the top nation in all skiing events just isn't true.

And, well, you can expect a lot, but that doesn't make it reality.
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Not the point at all. The point is that skiing is such a big sport here that hockey (as was the point of this thread in the 1st place) is non-existent in comparison.

Yes, Austria has always done well at alpine, and always will because it's your national sport much like Nordic is ours. Much like hockey today, alpine skiing was nothing here until Aamodt and Kjus burst onto the scene in the early 1990s. Since then Norway has three of the world's most winning male Alpine skiers (Aamodt 1st, Kjus 3rd & Lund Svindal 6th) all in the last 20 odd years. I believe that before that Norway's medal count at alpine was probably 2 or 3.

Any which way you count, Norway have got more medals in skiing than any other country in the Olympics and world championships, and with a population of barely 5 million it ought to give you an idea of why hockey will never overtake skiing in terms of interest, unlike in Sweden and Finland where it is already established as big winter sport. I can only assume that goes for Austria and Switzerland too.
 
Why isn't Norway a hockey powerhouse?

Finland has become a goalie machine, Sweden is ALWAYS strong hockey wise, why is Norway never in the same conversations? Is it geography? Because they are on the coast and very mountainous? Does the government not fund sports as much as the other countries?

Any Norway citizens who can explain this?
 
They find that boring snow running more interesting. Also mountains give them edge on that because of more hemoglobin.
 
Something I've been curious about as well. I have a friend from Bergen and when I offhand assumed that hockey was big in Norway a couple years back, she quickly corrected me by saying it wasn't really a big deal to most of them.
 
Because soccer and handball rule the teamsports and I believe there's LOTS of popularity with rest of the winter sports, like cross country skiing, snowboarding, downhill skiing, etc.

Hopefully Ice Hockey is rising, due to better players like Zucc and the new upcoming KHL team (?).
 
I believe he said Norway Citizens

I, too have always been curious about this, I'll wait until someone who actually knows what they're talking about provides a response.
 
At least it's growing there. Estonia, on the other hand is literally surrounded by countries where hockey is the main sport and it's dying over there, lol.
 
Popularity. Because popularity = money, and money = promotion + player/club development and promotion + player/club development = success.

And popularity is mainly based on culture.
 
chauron said:
Because soccer and handball rule the teamsports and I believe there's LOTS of popularity with rest of the winter sports, like cross country skiing, snowboarding, downhill skiing, etc.

Hopefully Ice Hockey is rising, due to better players like Zucc and the new upcoming KHL team (?).
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That sounds awful
 
chauron said:
Because soccer and handball rule the teamsports and I believe there's LOTS of popularity with rest of the winter sports, like cross country skiing, snowboarding, downhill skiing, etc.

Hopefully Ice Hockey is rising, due to better players like Zucc and the new upcoming KHL team (?).
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In addition to that, the population is 5 million. The pool is very limited and those sports get their share first.
 
Just not enough rinks...I'll try and get my kid interested in playing hockey at least, when he gets older. Maybe he'll be wearing skates next year when he is 2.5 years old. He will be testing skiing this winter though...
 
I was playing drop-in with a guy from Norway, my Grandfather is from Oslo and so I was talking to him about Norway and I had the same question. He said Sweden/Finland have a more farm/hard working people and the kids of those people have the hard work mentality that you need that to really do well in hockey. Norway has been the rich cousin for sometime now, snow sports have been an uper-middle class sport(x-country skiing is something that the Norwegians take pride in like USA and baseball or Canada and Hockey). X-country was how my Grandfather and many Norwegians got around in the winter when he was a kid. Even though hockey is also a $$ sport, in places like Sweden the government picks up the tab on many hockey programs(I hear that is no longer true).
So from what I gathered from that was, Hockey takes effort that they would rather put into some snow sport. Nothing has happened to change the culture to really adopt hockey. Even here(N. America) hockey was really the sport of the farmers son, not so much any more but all the big hockey hot beds really started out like that.
Also Sweden and Finland have a pretty flat topography with a lot of water. Norway very hilly and mountainous, not so conducive to pond hockey.
Denmark and Germany should also be better but nothing has happened for them to adopt hockey like Sweden, Finland etc..
 
Skiing is the one thing their good at, they will never let go off it. Especially when they would probably never be better in hockey then sweden.
It's the same with denmark holding on to football/handball and finland hockey. Each neighbour doing his part to outshine bigbrother in something.
 
Norway is a country of mountains, they ski there. Finland a country of lakes. Sweden is somewhere in between.

Over the years there have been a decent presence of Norwegians (and Danes) in the Swedish hockey league.

They need a star to get some interest up. Like Björn Borg got a lot of Swedes to play tennis back in his time. If they get some talented junior we would notice and would be able to develop him nicely here in Sweden until he becomes draft eligible.
 
I honestly think Norway is doing a good job if you look at the money invested in ice hockey and the number of players. They are between 8th and 12th best country with the national team.

Who should they surpass? Sweden, Finland or Czech Republic who all have a lot better possibilities?

It's not like in soccer where England has the best opportunities of all countries regarding player development, sports culture etc and still they have a ridiculous national team.

If Norway makes it to the quarterfinals of a hockey WC or OG its a big success already. If they don't make it its still okay if they are not dead last. The Norwegians also have many players in Sweden and Germany playing there. It's not like there is nothing done for them.
 
noexult said:
Just not enough rinks...I'll try and get my kid interested in playing hockey at least, when he gets older. Maybe he'll be wearing skates next year when he is 2.5 years old. He will be testing skiing this winter though...
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How hard could it be to build some rinks. Use a little oilmoney you pennywise little xxxxx
 
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