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Is the current league another level above the 80s and 90s?

illpucks

Registered User
May 26, 2011
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You know how you have sequential leagues based on talent level like
ECHL
AHL
NHL

Is today's NHL in another league compared to the 80s or 90s like would those players have to work hard in that NHL to get a call up to today's league?
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ECHL
AHL
NHL 80s/90s
Modern NHL
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gotyournose

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Oct 24, 2019
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Goalies are bigger and more athletic. Defenceman are required to skate well. They have to actually play defence, they can’t hook their way out. Forwards are more skilled and are required to have defensive awareness. A 4th line in today’s game could impact a game more than any other era
 
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BruinsFan37

BruinsFan37

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Jun 26, 2015
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The top end talent of the 80s and 90s would have no problem.

The fourth line goons, pure stay-at-home defensemen would struggle to make an ECHL squad. and stand-up goalies would have to either adapt or get cut as well.
 
MR4

MR4

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Oct 20, 2014
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ItWasJustified said:
No. Talent is something you're born with, and there are not more talented players born today than it was in the 1920s.
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This ignores whether the players in 1920s or even 1980s have their development begin with the same whole package of elite training/diet tracking/etc that players today have benefited from.

If you’re bringing back an average NHLer from the 1920s in a time machine? He’s gonna be the biggest plug on the ice.

If you give Bobby Orr the development path that youth (with $$$) get today? He’ll reach similar heights
 
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Spargon

Spargon

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May 31, 2019
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Ray Ferraro made a comment the other night during the Leaf game when Matthews made a nifty move. He said when he was playing not a single guy would even think to try a move like that or moves that the top players make almost nightly. It's only been in the last 10 years or so this new level of creativity is thriving.

Looking back at the highlights from the 80/90's the biggest thing that stands out is the goalies. Their playstyle was so rigid so many goals were just slapping unscreened shots we'd call muffins today right by them.
 
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Garl

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Oct 7, 2006
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NHL in the 80s and 90s are 2 different leagues.

NHL of the 90s was in my opinion a league with the biggest amount of talent.
Comparing on who would have made the roster is not realistic. The rules are very different between the 90s NHL and current one. If you take the top talent, they would adjust, the average players? Not really. 4th liners from the 90s would struggle with penalties and speed, current average players would struggle with lack of penalties and physicality and inferior equipment.
 
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snag

snag

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Feb 22, 2014
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MR4 said:
This ignores whether the players in 1920s or even 1980s have their development begin with the same whole package of elite training/diet tracking/etc that players today have benefited from.

If you’re bringing back an average NHLer from the 1920s in a time machine? He’s gonna be the biggest plug on the ice.

If you give Bobby Orr the development path that youth (with $$$) get today? He’ll reach similar heights
Click to expand...

You are born with talent. You develop skill. But without talent...you don't have a hope in hell.
 
Paperbagofglory

Paperbagofglory

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Nov 15, 2010
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Stop the narrative that players today are better. Players train better and are faster. Also skates and technique improves. Yet you look at someone like Mike Gartner who started in the mid 80s and was still the fastest player in the league in his late 30s towards the end of the 90s. You got to witness an old man become even a greater skater due to an improvement in equipment. Was he faster at 38 compared to to early 20's? You got to see the old men transition to the modern game and still dominate. Lemieux as an old broken man came back and dominated. Gretzky was getting 70 or more points in the dead puck era as a late 30s cripple. Messier as a 43 year old changed his diapers between intermissions yet was still getting 40 points at his age. Selanne scored 30 plus goals as a 40 year old. Jagr came back in his early 40s and look what he did his first season back in the NHL. You got to see the 80s era play till the early 2000s and they were all superior to the younger players at that time.
 
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ItWasJustified

ItWasJustified

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Jan 1, 2015
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Spargon said:
Ray Ferraro made a comment the other night during the Leaf game when Matthews made a nifty move. He said when he was playing not a single guy would even think to try a move like that or moves that the top players make almost nightly. It's only been in the last 10 years or so this new level of creativity is thriving.
Click to expand...
LOL. It's recency bias to sell the sport. I mean Jesus fornicating Christ...
 
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Raym11

Registered User
Oct 6, 2009
8,176
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tempofound said:
Yeah the league in the 90s was swarming with players born in 1920.
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you can choose to misinterpret what i implied considering i was replyin thank you it was super funny

at least i hope you were because it would be concerning if you werent doing it on purpose!
 

Raym11

Registered User
Oct 6, 2009
8,176
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ItWasJustified said:
Athletic talents and people with high hand-eye coordination is not higher today than it was in the 1920s per capita.
Click to expand...

Another guy who cant comprehend what i was saying so i'll do it for you guys since you cant read fully either

When i said "floor" is higher, and posted the world population, i implied there would be MORE people on earth, meaning MORE hockey players

More competitive but not necessarily more skilled at the top end, still means a higher "floor"

As I literally said.

In fact, i even implied the talents weren't higher, just that there was more. I'm worried about you guys.


There is objectively more hockey players, which means the worst players at these tiers are selected from a larger field, raising the floor. If you have ever played in a small town vs larger city, such as the GTAHL versus any town "A" teams, the difference in skill over an entire team composition is noticeable.

ItWasJustified said:
LOL. It's recency bias to sell the sport. I mean Jesus fornicating Christ...
Click to expand...


It's just Ferraro trying to fill dead-air with a hot take.

Not only has the same play been attempted many times, but guys actually score on it.
 
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ItWasJustified

ItWasJustified

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Jan 1, 2015
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Raym11 said:
Another guy who cant comprehend what i was saying so i'll do it for you guys since you cant read fully either
Click to expand...
I fully understood what you said, but OP wrote ''based on talent level''.
Nut Upstrom said:
Not sure what players born in the 1920s has to do with this
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I could've wrote players born in the 1420s and it wouldn't have made any difference to the point I was making. My point was that approximately the same number of people in every generation are born with different talents that potentially could make them great in specific fields, one of which is hockey.
 
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Svencouver

Svencouver

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Apr 8, 2015
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Paperbagofglory said:
Stop the narrative that players today are better. Players train better and are faster. Also skates and technique improves. Yet you look at someone like Mike Gartner who started in the mid 80s and was still the fastest player in the league in his late 30s towards the end of the 90s. You got to witness an old man become even a greater skater due to an improvement in equipment. Was he faster at 38 compared to to early 20's? You got to see the old men transition to the modern game and still dominate. Lemieux as an old broken man came back and dominated. Gretzky was getting 70 or more points in the dead puck era as a late 30s cripple. Messier as a 43 year old changed his diapers between intermissions yet was still getting 40 points at his age. Selanne scored 30 plus goals as a 40 year old. Jagr came back in his early 40s and look what he did his first season back in the NHL. You got to see the 80s era play till the early 2000s and they were all superior to the younger players at that time.
Click to expand...

Training better, being faster, being more skilled, and having better technique would probably be what I'd constitute as the players being better
 
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Nihiliste

Nihiliste

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Feb 8, 2010
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Do I think that Lemieux, Jagr, Gretzky, Sakic, Forsberg, Yzerman, Shanahan, Pronger, Niedermeyer, Iginla, Messier, Lindros, Bure, Lidstrom, Federov, Roy, Brodeur, Hasek, Selanne, Leetch, Bourque, etc wouldn’t be able to hang and excel in the current league? To suggest that is frankly pretty laughable since we saw overlap with many of these guys and many modern players.

In the early-mid 10s where the league was allowing tons of interference, I wouldn’t even have said the game on average was better.

Since the Pens back to back wins tilted the league in favor of speed and skill, I do think the average level has gone up. Everyone has to be a quality skater now.
 
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