I'm perfectly aware what the argument is. That post seemed to be slightly different.
You seem to be misunderstanding. The number of teams is a poor way to make a cutoff for the skill level of players, but it still impacts the the level of a quality needed to fill the role. Assuming a six team league at the current talent level, each team would be far better than current teams due to the concentration of talent. As such our definitions would have to change. The quality required to be a successful #1 D or #1 C becomes greater. Still, it's possible that a team would pay the 10th best center top line money, because there's likely not much difference between him and the 4th or 5th best guy. Say we make a list of the top 10 centers today:
Crosby
Malkin
Tavares
McDavid
Seguin
Giroux
Getzlaf
Kopitar
Toews
Thornton
That's 10 very good centers and obviously you can argue the order or add a guy like Backstrom or Stamkos. But that just speaks to the amount of talent in the league. How much difference is there really between Thornton and Getzlaf? Or Kopitar and Giroux? All these guys would be perfectly capable of playing and excelling on the top line in a six team league.
Now consider this: A new competing league of 6 teams similar to the former WHA breaks out with a fair number of NHLers leaving for it. All of the top forwards leave, but only a limited number of defensemen. Karlsson, Keith, Doughty, Hedman and Subban all bolt, along with a second group of Leddy, Klefbom, Tanev, Fowler, Larsson, Niskanen, and Hamonic. The rest of the defensemen are made up of minor leaguers. How many #1 defensemen are in the league? In a league where all the best forwards are condensed on 6 teams, would you trust Niskanen or Fowler or Leddy to succeed in that role when there's other teams putting out Keith or Doughty? I wouldn't. And I'd say in this league, based on the talent distribution, and number of teams, there's 5 guys you'd be comfortable with as your #1, and 7 guys you'd be comfortable with as your #2. If you don't have one playing in that role, you're SOL, and more than likely not winning anything.
Obviously that's an extreme example, but it shows just how ridiculous it is to try to put talent levels into a predetermined box based solely on the number of teams. League size isn't irrelevant to the situation, but because it's not based specifically on the talent at hand, an even distribution of players still doesn't mean every team has a player capable of adequately playing in the role their assigned.