"What is the evidence, and what does it mean?" Bill James
Canada has won 5 of the 7 tournaments with Canada's best players present:
Notes:
Totals in 1972 plus the finals and semi-finals of Canada/World Cups:
Some Canadians think Canada's best players never lose, (or at least they used to think that until Sept'96), but in fact Canada has lost games before and many of its wins have been narrow. Still, the above numbers show that Canada has had the best teams of any country overall, the only blemish being that the USSR has more goals against in head-to-head games. Canada has been an amazing 10-2 in must-win games (this counts the final 3 of the '72 series, all semi-final games, the 1981 final, the last 2 of the 1987 final, and the last game of the 1996 final). Some say Canada benefits from playing most games at home, which is probably true, but its road record is 5-1 (3-1 in Moscow in 1972, 2-0 in Philadephia in 1996), which is better than its home record (if you include the 1996 round-robin, Canada is 5-2 on the road). The above numbers exclude round-robin games of the Canada/World Cups, mainly because I don't have all the scores for those.
Biggest Threats to Canada's Dominance: The U.S. (population 261 million in 1994) and Russia (population 150 million in 1994) in theory could have more talent to draw upon than Canada (population 28 million in 1994), though at present more than half of the NHL players are from Canada. Sweden (9 million in 1994) seems limited by its small population, as do the Czech Republic (10 million), Slovakia (5 million) and Finland (5 million). Note that Germany (81 million after unification) was no pushover in the World Cup, France (58 million) played Canada tough in Albertville, and Japan (125 million) might be inspired by dream teams in Nagano. And who knows when China (1.19 billion) might show interest. But the biggest threat might be Quebec separation, which would knock the rest of Canada down to 21 million, and create a new adversary of 7 million.
NHL Citizenship Breakdown:
Right now, the U.S. appears to be far behind Canada in terms of talent pool size. But see Glenn Chin's article for an argument that the U.S. talent pool will catch up to Canada's soon.
Since the U.S. could beat Canada in a World Cup with a smaller talent pool, and Sweden could compete with Canada with a smaller talent pool, Canada should be able to play competitively in world tournaments for the rest of our lifetimes even if bigger countries produce a bigger talent pool.
The U.S. win in the World Cup should cause more American interest in the '98 Olympic Dream Teams. Canada will be determined to win the most-watched hockey tournament in history.
Sources: The scores for 1972-1991 and 1994 population numbers are taken from The 1996 Canadian Global Almanac, the NHL Citizenship Breakdown is taken from the Ottawa Sun, Sept 15/96, page 31, and the rest is from my memory. The win-loss and goals for/against tabulations are my arithmetic.
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Last Updated: 1997 Mar 31
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