Canada still the master of hockey!

[Teeqoz]

Augen said:

Teeqoz said:
Eh... Dominance in any sport by any country is rarely good for the sport. Look at cross-country skiing. Completely dominated by Norwegian athletes, and it's detrimental to the sport as a whole, on an international arena. While Hockey is bigger than cross-country, I'm still not convinced the sport is better off being dominated by a few countries.

For a century at has been largely dominated by the Canadians and the Soviets/Russians with the Swedes, Americans, and Finns being also being competitive. Hockey will always struggle to grow beyond countries that have the climate that are conducive to the sport.

I realize that hockey (or any winter sport for that matter) is largely reliant on the climate, but even then, there is room for hockey to grow bigger than it is, methinks. In my own Norway for instance, even though we too have been somewhat competetive in the later years. (We seem to want to stick with football being one of our favourite sports, regardless of how terrible we are at it.) As late as yesterday I read an article raising the question of why hockey isn't a more high profile sport in Norway than it is, considering our (relatively good) performance internationally.