Countries With Most Ice Hockey Players

[slates77]

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[Albatros]

Worth noting that those are registered players, and conditions vary in a way that make the numbers difficult to compare. In some countries practically everyone involved in the game of hockey is registered, in some only a fraction of.

 

[singlesliceofcheese]

Quite impressed with Norway's growth as of late in spite of being a smaller country (population wise). Hoping more people there will gravitate towards hockey.

 

[BKIslandersFan]

Didn't expect Japan to have more ice hockey players than Britain.

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

I’d be very interested in knowing how these numbers have been attained in each country.

I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if Finland had more practitioners than Sweden does, for example, but it’s hard to imagine that Finland would have over 10 000 more players registered with “official” teams, or whatever is the way you register players between the countries.

Hockey is, contrary to Sweden and as far as I know, the most popular sport in Finland, and my hunch is also that it’s a more viable leisure sport in more places where people live than in Sweden.

I found other numbers from 2020 stating that Sweden and Finland are more evenly situated at slightly above 70 000 registered players per country, which I think sounds about right. I also read that those 70-something thousand Swedish players are out of a group of barely 200 000 registered players of any sport. That seems like a large figure for hockey players, out of a rather small figure for the registered players in total? One guess would be that a large percentage of those who play hockey register with official teams in Sweden, whereas there’s hundreds of thousands of footballers in unofficial teams and leagues?

Since hockey is less of a pick-up sport than football, perhaps even “beer leagues” may register to receive some kind of support, but I’m not sure what to make of any of this.

What age groups are counted for the countries?

The eye sore of this list has to be the Czech Republic having more players than Russia or the Nordic countries, that just seems like a huge sign of the numbers not being attained in the same way between countries, no?

 

[Kleefeld]

I feel that Sweden is really overachieving when it comes to the quality of players they constantly produce. There are US states with more registered players.

 

[hypereconomist]

Latvia is really punching above it's weight with it's four current NHLers and handful of other players that are fringe NHLers (e.g. Daugauvins, Indrasis, Kivlenieks, Kenins, etc).

 

[HanTykje]

Funny that most of the clubs in NHL have about 70% ish Canadiens

 

[Ajax84]

Funny that most of the clubs in NHL have about 70% ish Canadiens

In 21-22, the NHL was 43.2% Canadian.

As already mentioned, these players-per-country numbers are not reliable since different countries will have different criteria for who gets counted as a "hockey player." Gross numbers can also be misleading even if the criteria is the same; for example if two countries have similar totals, but in one country hockey is less popular overall, this will likely mean that players begin at a later age, and participation is more casual.

 

[mattihp]

As already mentioned, these players-per-country numbers are not reliable since different countries will have different criteria for who gets counted as a "hockey player." Gross numbers can also be misleading even if the criteria is the same; for example if two countries have similar totals, but in one country hockey is less popular overall, this will likely mean that players begin at a later age, and participation is more casual.

So true. In Japan for example it is a big school sport and school players (who often have no intention to continue with the sport) are often registered as players.

 

[Bijelo]

United States and Canada will play faster.

Goalmachine Matthews can go to World Cup/Olympics and win quarter-finals and win semi and win final.

Gold medal for United States are big.