IIHF Hall of Famer, three-time Olympian and two-time World Champion Ronald Pettersson passed away last Saturday. He was 74.

Ronald Pettersson was one of the true Swedish hockey legends, in the same category as Sven “Tumba” Johansson and Roland Stoltz. He was as much revered in the 60s as Peter Forsberg, Mats Sundin and Niklas Lidström are today.

Coming from the small town and hockey hotbed of Surahammar in central Sweden, he was only referred to by his nickname – “Sura-Pelle” – by adoring fans.

During his 16 seasons at the top of international hockey Pettersson, a converted winger after starting as a defenceman, played 252 national team games with Tre Kronor, a Swedish hockey record that stood for 25 years before it was broken by Thomas Rundqvist in 1993.

His illustrious career included 10 IIHF World Championships with gold medal finishes in 1957 and 1962 and three Olympics (1956, 1960 and 1964) which left him with one silver medal. Pettersson also represented his country in the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, but suffered a career-ending leg injury during a regular season game in late 1967.

It is “Sura-Pelle”, along with national team centre Lars-Eric Lundvall, who is credited with making Gothenburg a hockey town in the early 1960s when they were recruited by the city’s Västra Frölunda hockey club from Södertälje for 4,000 Swedish kronor.

He led Frölunda, at that time a hockey minnow, to a Swedish national championship in 1965, the first-ever national hockey title won by a club from the south of the country. His jersey No. 14 hangs in rafters of Frölunda’s Scandinavium arena.

Pettersson was the head coach of the Swedish national team from 1974-1976 and he also coached the Norwegian national team. He was inducted to the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2004.