Quote:
Originally Posted by CAMOKAT
New Zealand and Samoa are major forces in rugby with far less players than australia, england, france... whats your point? remind me what Czechs won since 1998 olympics where they won on a fluke shot in OT???
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The point is unless they are juniors former Soviets/ Russians and Canadians dominate, those two countries are the top two countries in junior hockey, with Soviet Union killing the contest before the break in 1990 and Canada killing the contest after the break in 1990.
Czech Rep is 2 x junior world championships winner from 2000 and 2001 and number three historically in the all time medals rank.
While when we compare senior hockey - the situation is a little bit different, while Canada and SSSR dominated until the break in 1990 (with Canada beeing the main force before the WW II and SSSR beeing the main force after the WW II and the only country called Czechoslovakia beeing able to compete and winning 6 titles till 1990) the situation has rapidly changed after the break of the Soviet Union.
Although Russian hockey had some of the best players in the world, excelling in NHL - they were never able to perform well on the international field, with only one title in 1993 and waiting for the gold for 14 years already.
Canada is tied with Czech Republic (96,99,00,01,05) to be the best hockey team on the international field after the break in the 1990 with five world champs titles, whereas - if we took also one Slovakian gold in 2002 we could even claim the Czechoslovakian hockey is the top performing international force after the break of the Soviet Union, followed by Canada with five and Sweden with four titles.
So the point is - in the recent history - as far as Canada and Russia are still the the top countries in the junior hockey followed by the Czech Hockey, Canada / Czech Rep and Sweden perform better than Russia in senior ranks.