Age has always been a factor but not the factor you pretend it is.
I don't pretend anything, I only use the results of my research. Are you saying that age is not as important a factor as my extensive research has shown it to be? Because that's what I base my comments on: research into the subject. Please disprove my research if you can. Thoroughly and systematically, of course.
Total days after birth, difference between players, by the junior level is a very small single digit factor in the overall picture. An interesting example would be the "Trois Denis" line in the QMJHL - Denis Savard, Denis Cyr, Denis Tremblay.
Okay, so age isn't an important factor when evaluating players who are
exactly the same age? Is that your point here?
In three years of junior together Savard always had by far the most points of the three, followed by Cyr and then Tremblay. In terms of success at the NHL level, it's obviously Savard-Cyr-Tremblay in that same order. Not sure what your point here is other than junior scoring records can be a good indicator of future NHL success.
The history of hockey is full of players from junior, senior, university, minor league levels who had several good seasons or dominated at a level who never made the NHL. What contemporaries did in the NHL does not change the fact that Harry Watson was at the end of the day an excellent Sr A player and that was it.
You're pretending that Senior A has the same meaning in 1960 as it does in 1923. There were no minor leagues in the early 1920s. Players jumped straight from the better senior leagues (such as the OHA) directly to the NHL.
Look at the 1923/24 NHL, and identify the players that came into the league in the past five seasons. 0% of these players played minor pro immediately before joining the NHL; 90% played senior hockey, and 10% played junior.
Now look at the 1960/61 NHL, and identify the players that came into the league in the past five seasons. 60% of these players played minor pro immediately before joining the NHL; 5% played senior an 35% played junior.
Senior hockey went from contributing 90% of NHL players directly in the early 1920s to 5% in the early 1960s, and you think the two are equivalent?