Now, Germany is coming into these Olympics with some NHL stars.
Draisaitl is the highest-scoring Germany-born player in NHL history, with 1,036 points (428 goals, 608 assists) in 845 games. This season, he is fifth in the NHL with 80 points (29 goals, 51 assists) in 55 games. In 2019-20, Draisaitl had 110 points (43 goals, 67 assists) in 71 games and won the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL scoring leader, the Hart Trophy as most valuable player and the Ted Lindsay Award as most outstanding player, as voted by players.
Seider, who won the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year in 2021-22, has 38 points (seven goals, 31 assists) in 58 games and is fourth in the NHL in ice time per game (25:40). Stutzle leads Ottawa with 61 points (28 goals, 33 assists) in 57 games.
Grubauer, who won the Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals in 2018 and was a finalist in 2020-21 for the Vezina Trophy, awarded to the best goalie in the NHL, is 11-6-3 with a 2.43 goals-against average and .916 save percentage in 22 games (19 starts) for the Kraken.
Peterka, who put up NHL career highs in assists (41) and points (68) with the Buffalo Sabres last season, has 38 points (20 goals, 18 assists) in 57 games with the Mammoth this season.
“Overall, I think they definitely have produced more talent in the last few years, I mean higher-end talent,” former NHL defenseman Dennis Seidenberg said.
Seidenberg, who played 859 NHL games with the Philadelphia Flyers, Phoenix Coyotes, Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Boston Bruins and New York Islanders, also represented Germany at the 2002 Salt Lake City, 2006 Torino and 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
“We always had six to 10 Germans playing in the League, but these days most of the Germans who play in the League are superstars,” he said. “So that’s a little bit different from when I played. I don’t know, it just seems to produce more high-end talent.”
A big reason for that may be Marco Sturm. The Bruins coach was the general manager and coach of the German national team from 2015-18, guiding the country to a silver medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
That success came after Sturm made changes.
“I just tried to build the foundation,” he said. “I think for me that was the biggest thing, starting with coming into the rink, have a daily routine and the practice habits. There’s a lot of things to it, on and off the ice. I think that the biggest thing for me was to change the culture a little bit and give them a guideline, how to be a professional hockey team or federation. I think that’s something I started and worked out well.
“I think that’s what they needed. They needed a guy just to guideline them and get things started in the right direction and then we added really good pieces, not just the hockey department, other departments too. And of course, the silver medal helped too. Sponsorships and media. So it kind of took some time but it definitely, definitely grew big time.”
Changes also came in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL), Germany’s top-tier hockey league, part of the development path for Seider and Stutzle, who both played for Adler Mannheim. Teams in the DEL began adding staff members that had been commonplace in North American hockey.
“All teams now have full-time [physiotherapists], full-time athletic coaches, and a lot of the teams work with sports psychologists,” German national team coach Harold Kreis said. “Players have a good supporting staff to get physically prepared, mentally prepared, and players invest a lot of time, too.”