European Hockey Best?

The following article is an Associated Press article from 1972 following Team Canada's lacklustre performance in Stockholm Sweden.
 
The myth about the superiority of Canadian hockey players is crushed and the best hockey in the world is played in Europe, Swedish newspapers said today after two games between Sweden and Team Canada here.
 
Canada won the first 4-1 and the second was tied 4-4.
 
"In the moment of truth some of the paid athletes of the world stand without other assets than a brilliant goalie, Ed Johnston," Nic Aslund of the tabloid Aftonbladat said of the Canadian players.
 
"The best ice hockey is played in Europe and that will be more evident than ever after Team Canada's four games against the Soviet Union and then against the reigning world champions of Czechoslovakia.
 
"European ice hockey has developed since the Canadian heydays during the 1950s, and Canadian ice hockey has stalled.
 
"Today, the Canadians have nothing else to do than to blame the referees, which the Canadian sports writers here did Sunday with emphasis and arrogance."
 
After the first game, Aslund wrote: "Canada, why did you do this to us? There we were again, full of expectation like a child on Christmas Eve, to see the world's best hockey. It was something that had to become a hockey feast. It became a nothing, a deception. I never felt so disappointed."
 
Expressen's sports chief Bertil Jansson summarized the games:
 
"The battle with Canada is over. It left bloodstained ice behind.
 
"That is one side of the Canadians. They lose all style and sense when a defeat is threatening. Simply bad losers."
 
"This is not sports - either here or in Canada, it is assault," Bobby Bystrom of Dagens Nyheter said about Vic Hadfield's attack against Swedish defenseman Lars-Erik Sjoberg.
 
Sjoberg's nose was broken and he had to leave the rink bleeding after being hit by Hadfield's stick.
 
"Scandal is the right word for the behaviour of Team Canada," Svenska Dagbladet's Jan Larsson said. "Thoughts wandered a long way from sport when I saw one criminal assault after another.
 
"If Hadfield had attacked Sjoberg like he did somewhere other than on an ice hockey rink he would have been convicted. And if not jailed, at least fined by a court."