Like Rhiessan said, no one actually considers all eras equal in any sort of absolute sense, and very, very few consider them all equal in a relative sense, either.
well judging by his posts it seems the former is more true than the latter but that besides the point here.
You'll be delighted to know that, although I don't say so openly very often, I think if you time warped a prime Doug Harvey into today's world he would be an AHL player.
Why would I be delighted to know that?
But that's not how I judge players in a historical context, and that is not how this section operates, either.
I'm fully aware of that and in agreement with it as well. I'll even further it and say that it's really difficult, for a variety of reasons but mostly due to entirely different sets of information, to compare pre WW2 players with players later in the Century and beyond.
I don't automatically think that a player being xth best in 1950 means that it's the same as being xth best in 2000. Nor does anyone else in the ATD or the HOH discussions. The difference between you and most of us, is that you seem to want to take that "x" and multiply it by about 10 in order to appropriately judge 1950s (for example) rankings and achievements compared to modern day, whereas most of us have a factor that is somewhere in the 1.5-5 range. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Where is the multiple of 10 come from?
I'm pretty consistent in my distinctions of teh differetn eras and the diffculty in treating them as quite similar or quite close.
1915 with many leagues is different than a post 1930 pretty much considalted NHL.
WW2 years, and Richards 50 in 50, is different than the late 40's and mid 60's.
Rapid expansion and the WHA makes for a vastly different league than say in 1965.
And finally and perhaps most importantly, or not to some, the large change and increase of the NHL talent pool, both in terms of quantity which seems to comes slightly quicker than the the quality of non Canadian NHLers which is the primary makeup of the NHL pre 1980.
I don't attach actual ratios or numbers to this as it's not an exact science and there are other variables at play as well.
But unless one thinks that Canadian talent has decreased by quite a bit, the top 10 Canadians in goals, assist and points that is the norm in the 70's, for example can probably be compared to the top 10 Canadians in the post 95ish era and throw in the other 10 non Canadians to make a top 20.
For example, assuming all things are equal (and they never are exactly) there is a top 10 points leaders for any given year in the 70's.
That list is comprised almost exclusively, and it might be exclusive going off memory here, of Canadian players.
Skip forward to most post 95 years and when we get to the 10th top scoring Canadian there are usually close to 10 non Canadian ahead of him. It's probably slightly less on aggregate post 95 but for the sake of this example let's say it's 10 and 10.
Wouldn't the 10 in the 70's be pretty similar to the 20 in the post 95?
The 10th Canadian surely can't be compared as exactly the same in both years can they or even really close?
A more specific example is for the Russian Dmen on the top 60 list and their NHL contemporaries, mostly in the 70's and 80's.
If they (Vasiliev (25th), Fetisov (8th) and Kastatonov (39th) had played in the NHL would guys like Savard, Lapointe ect... be rated as high?
Perhaps but it's doubtfull all 5 guys would be because they would be direct peers now. Maybe savard never gets a top 5 Norris vote or only 1 or 2 years, he would slip down probably.
This is what happens to later guys like Nieds and Zubov that play in a fully integrated league and become each others peers.
Peer to peer comparison after all is something that really comes up alot in the top 60 Dman project, and most likely for the top forwards as well.