Canada
Scandinavia
Russia/USA
Canada is a large, first world nation that immerses hockey in every day life, in every geographical location.
The Scandinavian countries are smaller and have one sport in every country that is more important nationally than ice hockey. Finland is probably number one because Bandy is one of their faves and that’s a hockey sub group. Sweden cares more about soccer as a nation, imo, Norway cross country skiing and handball, if w extend to the Dutch it’s soccer again and they are an ehlers away from hockey irrelevance.
Russia/USA are world powers with enormous populations that spread out the options and geographical region preferences. Both countries have multiple sports that are overall more popular than ice hockey. And it is a very regionalized sport in those two countries. Football, basketball and baseball in America, soccer, basketball and arguably tennis are bigger in Russia for the average person. Russian totals for number of players actively involved is surprisingly low for the quality of talent that comes to the nhl.
I understand that the overall euro culture of face painting and acting crazy makes the “passion” visible for their games. But that is pretty much reserved for the local pro teams. There is no concept of the local amateur teams having big attendance or spirited fans over there. So the idea that you can go to a Minnesota high school game and have 4,000 in attendance is unbelievable to them. The junior levels, the ncaa games with lunatic fans that North America provides is just non-existent there.
If I had to bet with no research done, I suspect there are more d-1, d-3 and Canadian college teams than professional teams in Europe, excluding Russia, and they have all the passionate fans that the Swiss or any other Euro country provides.
The nhl is just too expensive to get enough of the nuts in sections with season tickets.