Vancouver Now - It's not political, but more Canadians are lefties
This is something I’ve noticed for a long time but could not put my finger on it: the preponderance of Canadian hockey players shoot left-handed, while in the US the opposite is true and majority of players shoot right-handed.
What this article does not say, but which I think is true and important is that this comes down to much of the competitive differences between the two countries in international tournaments with the advantage tilted in favor of the Canadians: the same percentage of the population that is naturally right-handed* should shoot left-handed in hockey (and golf, archery, billiards, etc). While some players in Canada default to shooting left-handed when they would be better served by shooting right-handed, an ever larger amount of US players shoot right-handed who would be better off shooting left-handed.
Perhaps the downside of shooting with the dominant hand low is minimal, but many things in the world are decided by tiniest of percentages in favor of one side. Basically over time these small percentage biases accumulate and to provide a significant long-term advantage. Examples of this are Casinos and Evolution.
(*) AFAICT the percentage of left-handed people in the world is 10%. I wonder how much of this is influence by cultural bias against left-handed people, aka me, aka southpaws, aka left-handed people are at a disadvantage in the world, etc.
