Ice hockey at the 1952 Winter Olympics

The men’s ice hockey competition at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo was the seventh Olympic tournament, and it also counted as the 19th World Championships and the 30th European Championships. Canada, represented by the Edmonton Mercurys, took home its sixth Olympic gold medal and 15th World title. The event almost didn’t happen. Starting in 1950, the International Olympic Committee demanded that teams follow its amateur rules instead of those of the International Ice Hockey Federation, and wanted to exclude IIHF president Fritz Kraatz from talks. IIHF past-president W. G. Hardy and secretary George Dudley refused to negotiate on those terms or to disavow Kraatz. Dudley predicted the IIHF would hold its own 1952 World Championships instead, and warned the Olympics would be a financial flop without hockey. In 1951, hockey was dropped from the program due to lingering disputes from the 1948 Games, but at the IOC congress in Romania that same year, it was reinstated. Hardy pushed for the Soviet Union’s team to be included, as long as politics stayed out, but Soviet authorities missed the application deadline. Germany and Czechoslovakia returned to top-level international hockey. Nine nations played a round-robin, with medals going to the top three. Swiss newspapers criticized the rough play of Canada and the United States, questioning whether hockey belonged in the Olympics. Canadian Amateur Hockey Association president Doug Grimston countered that the games were tame by North American standards and that the Olympics would suffer without hockey, its biggest draw. In the final round-robin game, Canada and the United States tied, putting Canada first and the United States second in the standings. If Canada had won, the United States would have finished fourth. A Moscow newspaper alleged a deal was made to guarantee the U.S. a silver medal and keep Czechoslovakia out of the medals. Canada won its sixth Olympic gold and 15th world title. The U.S. finished one point ahead of Sweden and Czechoslovakia, both of which had six wins and two losses and identical goal differentials of +29. After Czechoslovakia beat Sweden 4–0 on the final day, the Czechoslovaks thought they had won the Olympic bronze and the European Championship. But organizers ordered a tie-breaking game, in which Sweden came back from a three-goal deficit to win 5–3. The tournament was also the 1952 Wo