Watched them play against in CHL. They got runned over by depth of SHL and Liiga teams excluding couple of NLA top teams. Have you ever seen average depth players from NLA jumping to SHL, Liiga or even KHL at some cases?
Well we could also dig out some previous years where NLA teams won the whole thing (with KHL teams even). It can give you pointers but not the whole picture (Madrid and Barcelona are very successfull in the CL, doesn't tell you much about the depth of a very top heavy league compared to others either).
The same applies the other way as well, if Davos wins the CHL this year it won't make the NLA instantly the best european league outside the KHL either.
And no, depth players dont jump to SHL or Liiga (i don't think any swiss played in the KHL). They also dont come to the NLA either, that would be really stupid with the import rules.
But is it really close of being close with Finnish junior player developement?
Of course not (hockey as a sport is much more popular in Finland), but getting closer, alltough we have a lot to catch up still.
Alot of Finnish U20 and U18 national team players are going to be just average depth players in Liiga or Finnish tier 2 league players. They are still far ahead swiss national junior teams. Junior player developement is the foundation of producing players to the european leagues. Because about 70-80 precent of the european league players is from the junior player developement system.
And what makes you think thats different in the NLA? The difference is that your top guys most likely will play in the NHL, whereas ours (outside a few) have more of an outside shot if everything goes well.
Also, we "steal" some of your better euro players, and that obviously helps the depth of the NLA along as well.
Like i said in previous post Matthews playing in worse league doesen't change the fact that he has outproduced ex NHLers and IMO he have been most impressive player so far from european leagues. But i don't agree that NLA is equal to Liiga or even being close. It's tier below to me.
Its close enough to not use hyperboles. The gap certainly isnt like what it is to the DEL or a similar league. Anyway we are both fans, so we can probably argue about this forever, so lets just agree that its close enough that we can actually compare the 3 top prospects to each other.
