The charts below break down the player production between the 1917-18 and 2007-08 seasons by player nationality. The resulting view reflects not only the history of the NHL and the internationalization of the game but also shows the impact world politics has had on the game.

Looking back at the 90 years of NHL history, the league has evolved from having an almost exclusively Canadian player base to a highly diverse league with player nationalities ranging from Croatia to Japan. At the same time, the league has expanded and the number of players competing each season for Stanley Cup has grown and is now hovering around the 1000 player mark.

During the first 50 years, Canadian players provided roughly 90% of material for the NHL teams, while the remainder was split between players from the United States and European immigrants – most notably United Kingdom (see chart).

It is likely that most immigrants had Canadian or U.S nationality, having moved to North America as young children, but in the charts above they are shown as their own group, because it shows the flow of people from the old continent to the new at the turn of the 20th century.

After the 1970s, the Canadian dominance gradually diminished as players from the Unites States, Sweden and Finland began to find their way to the NHL in greater numbers. By the end of the 1980s, the share of Canadians in the league had dropped to approximately 75%.

Fall of the Berlin Wall resulted in another wave of players as the stars from the former Soviet and Czechoslovakian national teams were allowed to sign with NHL teams. At the same time, Sweden and Finland increased their player production bringing the share of Canadians close to the 50% mark, where the number appears to have stabilized in the past few seasons.

Nonetheless, in terms of player production, there is only one hockey superpower in the world. Canada continues to produce the biggest number of NHL players that no other single nation comes close to challenging.

During the past 35 years the number of different nationalities present in the league has grown substantially. The chart below breaks down the ‘Other’ category from the charts above to show how players are distributed among the smaller hockey nations.