Does level of competition matter for prospect development?
I've actually just checked in my db where all the players have 200 PA and checked from which leagues the Star players were from. I was pleasantly surprised:
8 of them were from different USA's leagues mainly HE, 12 were from the CHL, 1 was from hungary/austria, 5 from swedish leagues, 4 from slovaks leagues, 1 from finnish leagues, 3 czech, 3 russians, 1 french, 1 swiss and 1 german.
You can clearly see how the big leagues are better, usa with 8, canada with 12 and the big euro ones. However there's still hope with the small countries like french, austria, swiss so it's still possible to get a star player in mediocre leagues!
This is cool but I wanted more information so I checked all of the Superb players:
58 of them are from the CHL (Canada really dominates this), 21 from USA college, 10 from czech, 6 from slovak, 5 from finnish, 1 from Netherland, 13 from russians, 13 from swedish, 5 from austria (this really surprised me), 1 from Belarus, 1 from swiss, 2 from germans, 1 from norway, 1 from Ukraine, 1 from Slovenia
Here we see a more in-depth percentage of players from high level leagues. Of course the CHL dominates but USA, Sweden, Russia and Czech put up a decent amount of good players. There's also a few exceptions like the Netherlands one or the Ukraine but I really can't explain the Austrians ones. This is one of the lowest level league of the game (if not the lowest) and they managed to develop a Star player and 5 Superb players. All of them stayed in Austria or the Hungarian juniors before being signed by an NHL team so the level of competition isn't a factor here, they probably also have low level training facilities compared to other leagues.
I also found a
very interesting case. This spanish guy played for a Junior C league then became a free agent due to not being signed and got 44 games in his first year with the Devils. He's now a Superb reputation player. He's pretty young so he probably developed a lot with the Devils but it's still a very strange case.
http://i.imgur.com/fuHLEim.png http://i.imgur.com/BnGczyU.jpg
Conclusion: It's hard to say if the level of competition is a factor to take into consideration. It's safe to say that most CHL players had a better original CA than those in the europeans leagues or even the USA leagues, that explains the domination of the CHL leagues. Same goes for Russia, Sweden and Czech Republic. There's a lot of exceptions though so I think those guys are supposed to dominate their respective leagues in the original DB so they had higher CA and lower PA, but since I increased everyone's PA they became quality prospects. In the original DB you will not find so many good players in Austria or any other small countries like France or Netherlands, those are caused by my 200 PA DB but you can see that they develop pretty well even while being in a weak league.
Edit: I have another question, does coaches even influence your team? Also is it better to pick up better attributes coach or a coach that actually wins trophy? I have a HC with weak attributes but he won the AHL cup like 3-4 times in a row and he keeps briging my team to the playoff even if my goalie sucks and we usually end up in 2nd or 3rd round.
First in round 1, then round 2, and now in the CF. Lehtonen has been amazing every season, but every single time we play the Hawks he gets lit up, I don't get it.
He signed with Boston a couple of days later..
