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

[Johnny HFBOARDS]

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?
Like
ECHL
AHL
NHL 80s/90s
Modern NHL

Has there been best ever posters since ARPANET?

 

[The Panther]

In 1987 there were still 18 Canadians among the top 20 scorers, or 79 among the top 100 (twenty Europeans in top 200).

What that tells is that in 1987, probably around 75% of the top offensive players in the world were Canadian.

Ten years later about a half were from elsewhere. Among goalies Minnesota backup Kari Takko was the only European in the league in 1987.

That's fine, but it doesn't validate your entirely wrong point that "For much of the 1980s it was still essentially a Canadian league." You could at least admit you were wrong.

(About European goalies, don't forget the great Pelle Lindberg, 1st team All Star in 1983, and Cup Finalist in 1985. And there were several European goalies before Tako.)

Also, you're kind of exaggerating the degree to which top scorers "ten years later" (does this mean the 1990s?) were from elsewhere. 8 of the top 10 scorers in the nineties were Canadians (that's not counting Brett Hull, so it's really like 9 of 10), which is exactly the same as in the eighties. 7 of the top 35 scorers in the nineties were non-Canadians.

 

[PepeBostones]

Oliver Ekman-Larsson tries 1980's equipment and it's not easy. Great memories. Sorry if posted elsewhere. Thought it would be of interest giving the thread

 

[sr edler]

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.

Ray Ferraro is a broadcaster and is paid money to gush over today's game, and shill for its players. It's literally his job. One should never take hyperbolic stuff like this for gospel. Wayne Gretzky at some point said everyone was the best player ever.

Hockey in the 80s and 90s had tons of nifty players. Mario Lemieux. Denis Savard. Peter Stastny. Rick "Nifty" Middleton. Wayne Gretzky. Kent "Magic Man" Nilsson. Pat Lafontaine. Pavel Bure. Jaromir Jagr. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Kent Nilsson for instance was famous for his crossbar challenge where he would hit the crossbar from center ice in practice, with a slapshot. According to Brett Hull in his autobiography, Nilsson, while playing for the Winnipeg Jets with Bobby Hull in the late 1970s, would challenge young Brett and his brothers that he could hit 7 out of 10 crossbars from center ice, and then he hit 8 or 9 out of 10.

And, if you don't want to take Hull's words for gospel either, which perhaps you probably shouldn't, Nilsson later on went on a TV segment in Calgary where the producers challenged him to hit just 1 out of 5 tries. He famously hit it with the first try, and then skated off. The key point is that Nilsson was super skilled. While playing in Atlanta with the Flames before the team relocated to Canada, Nilsson also picked up golf and became a scratch/semi-pro level player.

Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan tried to replicate Nilsson's crossbar challenge a few years back, and failed. Gaudreau finally hit the bar with his 5th and final puck, while Monahan couldn't get a single one. And isn't Gaudreau considered one of the niftier players in the game today?



There are obviously very skilled guys in the league today too, like there are in any generation, but the notion that creativity is something that just came around in the last 10 years is just plain absurd.

I would even say the speed increase in the game the last 5 or so years has seen a setback in overall creativity, because far from everyone in the league can handle the puck at such speed. You often see players mishandling the puck at full speed in today's game, with pucks bouncing here, there and everywhere like it's some pinball game.

The most stick-skilled players in today's game are still the players who are able to find space to slow down the pace and thread needles. Like Patrick Kane.

The NHL today has a lot more men to draw from as potential hockey players, due to being able to attract talent from countries across the world, as well as the fact that the population of all these countries are way higher then the were a in 1920.

Ice hockey is still the same niche sport today as it was in the 80s & 90s, more or less. NHL today doesn't draw talent from "across the world", that's a delusional pipe dream. Yeah, I guess they potentially could draw all that talent, but they aren't. Unless with "across the world" you mean a few smaller hockey countries in Europe like Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark.

By the way, the recent influx of talent from countries like Slovenia (Kopitar), Switzerland (Josi, Hischier, Niederraiter, Fiala, Meier), Germany (Draisaitl) and Denmark (Eller) is also more or less mitigated on a whole by the fact that a country like Slovakia has seen a steep decline in talent output since the 90s. In the 90s/early 00s they had players like Ziggy Palffy, Peter Bondra, Pavol Demitra, Marian Hossa, Miroslav Satan, Marian Gaborik, Zdeno Chara, and a bunch of other depth guys like Michal Handzus, Josef Stümpel, et cetera. Now they have Tomas Tatar and Richard Panik, and nothing else.

 

[Albatros]

What that tells is that in 1987, probably around 75% of the top offensive players in the world were Canadian.

Yet these NHL teams were frequently losing to Soviets, one would think that quite a few of those victors would have been good enough to hold their own in the NHL as well. At the '87 Canada Cup seven of the top ten scorers were Soviet. The best other European was Mikael Andersson who never came to North America. In the 1990s that became almost unthinkable.

That's fine, but it doesn't validate your entirely wrong point that "For much of the 1980s it was still essentially a Canadian league." You could at least admit you were wrong.

You're certainly entitled to your own opinion and apparently manners as well. Regarding that, the NHL became much more welcoming towards Europeans in the 1990s which was a big part of this change. In the 1980s many who did come over did not stay for long due to better conditions back home.

Also, you're kind of exaggerating the degree to which top scorers "ten years later" (does this mean the 1990s?) were from elsewhere. 8 of the top 10 scorers in the nineties were Canadians (that's not counting Brett Hull, so it's really like 9 of 10), which is exactly the same as in the eighties. 7 of the top 35 scorers in the nineties were non-Canadians.

1986/87:
1. Wayne Gretzky
2. Jari Kurri
3. Mario Lemieux
...
14. Joe Mullen
...
23. Mats Näslund

1996/97:
1. Mario Lemieux
2. Teemu Selänne
3. Paul Kariya
4. John LeClair
5. Wayne Gretzky
6. Jaromír Jágr
7. Mats Sundin
8. Zigmund Pálffy

 

[PepeBostones]

Goalie equipment. Todays gear vs 1990. Colorado Avalanche goalie prospect Adam Werner using former Philadelphia Flyer Tommy Söderström's goalie equipment.

 

[Griffin6612]

A not totally useless thread by you. Actually decent discussion. Bravo

 

[The Panther]

Yet these NHL teams were frequently losing to Soviets, one would think that quite a few of those victors would have been good enough to hold their own in the NHL as well. At the '87 Canada Cup seven of the top ten scorers were Soviet. The best other European was Mikael Andersson who never came to North America. In the 1990s that became almost unthinkable.



You're certainly entitled to your own opinion and apparently manners as well. Regarding that, the NHL became much more welcoming towards Europeans in the 1990s which was a big part of this change. In the 1980s many who did come over did not stay for long due to better conditions back home.



1986/87:
1. Wayne Gretzky
2. Jari Kurri
3. Mario Lemieux
...
14. Joe Mullen
...
23. Mats Näslund

1996/97:
1. Mario Lemieux
2. Teemu Selänne
3. Paul Kariya
4. John LeClair
5. Wayne Gretzky
6. Jaromír Jágr
7. Mats Sundin
8. Zigmund Pálffy

(a) I don't think scoring at one short tournament in 1987 (where Soviets and Canadians were bound to dominate scoring as they played more games than other countries) tells us anything useful. As to NHL teams losing to the Soviets.... You can't be seriously thinking this is a valid point? If you want to go down that rabbit-hole, consider that WHA teams had better winning records vs. the Soviet teams than NHL teams did. One-off games are nothing. I recall some of those games in the latter-80s and a lot of the time the NHL clubs didn't want to even play them. It was in mid-season, wasn't for points, and players wanted to stay home and celebrate Christmas / New Year's.
(b) Viewers can decide whether my comparison of the entire 1980s to the entire 1990s is a more valid point about 80s vs. 90s than your cherry-picked comparison of the 1986-87 to 1996-97 seasons in isolation.

You can also stop moving the goal-posts and just back-track from your erroneous statement that "For much of the 1980s it was still essentially a Canadian league."

I'm not letting it go because this has become a sore spot for me. When I was 10 years old in 1986 and started watching the NHL regularly, many of my favorite players were Europeans (and Americans). These were high-profile players (some had been high-profile in the 70s, at that), all-stars, fan favorites, leading scorers, Cup champs. My team, the Oilers, had been regularly bringing in Finnish players since 1979 and carried on through the early-90s with great success. I have tons of memories of European players doing great things in the 80s.

Yet I often read on this forum that the moment ex-Soviets showed up in October 1989, or later, was the moment Europeans started coming, and before that there were none. It's just false revisionism of the worst kind.

 

[Oilslick941611]

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.

the 90s had top end talent for sure, it also had a bunch of hacks and goons who couldn’t play holding and obstructing the top end talent every night and causing major head injuries to star players.

 

[Albatros]

(a) I don't think scoring at one short tournament in 1987 (where Soviets and Canadians were bound to dominate scoring as they played more games than other countries) tells us anything useful. As to NHL teams losing to the Soviets.... You can't be seriously thinking this is a valid point? If you want to go down that rabbit-hole, consider that WHA teams had better winning records vs. the Soviet teams than NHL teams did. One-off games are nothing. I recall some of those games in the latter-80s and a lot of the time the NHL clubs didn't want to even play them. It was in mid-season, wasn't for points, and players wanted to stay home and celebrate Christmas / New Year's.
(b) Viewers can decide whether my comparison of the entire 1980s to the entire 1990s is a more valid point about 80s vs. 90s than your cherry-picked comparison of the 1986-87 to 1996-97 seasons in isolation.

Yes, I'm sure a lot of players cared more about the Xth game of the season against the Hartford Whalers than they did about a potentially once in a career meeting with the Soviets. And Xmas was just a few weeks before too. Such excuses naturally have nothing to do with losing on home ice to the Cold War enemy... Be that as it may, the 1980s generation of Soviet players wasn't much inferior to the 1990s stars that participated in taking the NHL to the next level.

1987 I picked as an example only because you mentioned this particular year, if you prefer a different one that's fine by me. But if you just list players that played at least a few NHL games at some point in their career that's just devoid of context. For example the first name on the list, Nedomanský, joined the NHL already on his last legs, and while he had been a great player ten years before, having him in his mid-to-late 30s was of little significance anymore. Peter Šťastný and Jari Kurri were up there with anyone, but the 1980s in general no match to the 1990s.

You can also stop moving the goal-posts and just back-track from your erroneous statement that "For much of the 1980s it was still essentially a Canadian league."

As I said, among the top 100 scorers in 1987 there were 79 Canadians. 18 in top 20. In earlier years that was even worse. The NHL was no more international than various European national leagues back then, a Canadian national league. On the other hand, if you also think of the 1980s German Bundesliga as something else than a German league then I suppose it's a coherent view at least.

I'm not letting it go because this has become a sore spot for me. When I was 10 years old in 1986 and started watching the NHL regularly, many of my favorite players were Europeans (and Americans). These were high-profile players (some had been high-profile in the 70s, at that), all-stars, fan favorites, leading scorers, Cup champs. My team, the Oilers, had been regularly bringing in Finnish players since 1979 and carried on through the early-90s with great success. I have tons of memories of European players doing great things in the 80s.

I'm sure, they were a big part of the dynasty Oilers. But if we look at 1987 again, it was when Ruotsalainen (27) and Näslund (30) went back to Europe at a relatively early age, and that autumn it was just Kurri and Tikkanen left in the team. The rest of the roster was entirely Canadian.

Yet I often read on this forum that the moment ex-Soviets showed up in October 1989, or later, was the moment Europeans started coming, and before that there were none. It's just false revisionism of the worst kind.

I would say it's an overt simplification, the reasons as for why the NHL became the non plus ultra of the hockey world in the 1990s were more complex than simply just a result of Soviet downfall. But it's safe to say that without the Eastern Bloc collapse it could not have happened to the same extent as it did. The 1990s NHL would not have been as much better as it was. One event that often gets overlooked is the emergence of NHL broadcasting in Europe around this time. Hardly anyone knew anything about the North American league up until this point beyond that it exists, but by the mid-1990s there was already a new generation of players dreaming of playing there.

 

[SENSational]

Average NHL player today is much better than the average NHL player back then. Top talent from the 80s and especially 90s would still be stars in today's NHL, although they would not score as much as they did.

Goalies, coaching tactics and strategy, and training are so much better today it's stupid to even compare.

 

[NoName]

I didn't do a comparison between the talent level of the 1920s and today. I just said that the same % of people are born with different talents in every generation to shine a light over OP's absurd question about the difference in talent level between today and the 80s/90s.

To be blunt, that is not the claim you originally made, what you said was:

No. Talent is something you're born with, and there are not more talented players born today than it was in the 1920s.

And indeed there absolutely are "more talented players born today then it was in the 1920s" due to the fact that there are a lot more people being born today then 100 years ago and more of those people having access and exposure to hockey. If you are now saying that there is a comparable proportion of the total population that have an innate talent hockey as there was in 1920, then that is a much more defensible claim.

 

[Tripod]

The other day when McDavid got a point, SN showed how he was the tied for 4th fastest to reach that number(in regards to game played). Note...can't remember what the exact number was.

But who was he tied for 4th with? Bobby Orr. Sort of crazy when you think about how good McDavid has been since he started, and that a Dman was able to be just as productive.

Just found it interesting so thought I would share.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Goalie equipment. Todays gear vs 1990. Colorado Avalanche goalie prospect Adam Werner using former Philadelphia Flyer Tommy Söderström's goalie equipment.

This video makes me SO happy. It validates something I’ve been trying to describe for years, without having a way to show it in action:

When discussing goaltending, it needs to be reiterated that modern technique is objectively superior AND that these techniques are physically impossible to sustain with 80s-style equipment. Guys like Bishop and Vasilevskiy would be on IR after their first game in Billy Smith’s pads, and their adjustment to that equipment would negate the advantages of being so tall.

Start that video at 7:40 to see what I mean.

It is way too easy to look at today’s goalies and say “80s goalies were a joke, they couldn’t even make basic saves”.

Today’s goaltending techniques are reliant on equipment that did not exist in the 1980s. It is flat-out impossible to play a modern style in 1980s style pads. You can see this demonstrated very clearly from 7:40 to 8:30 in the video.

Put today’s goalies on equipment from that era and you will very quickly have:

1) A bunch of guys on IR with knee and throat injuries

2) A new generation of goalies who learn to play the game on their feet rather than on their knees, mirroring the change that happened ~1990

 

[NoName]

Ice hockey is still the same niche sport today as it was in the 80s & 90s, more or less. NHL today doesn't draw talent from "across the world", that's a delusional pipe dream. Yeah, I guess they potentially could draw all that talent, but they aren't. Unless with "across the world" you mean a few smaller hockey countries in Europe like Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark.

By the way, the recent influx of talent from countries like Slovenia (Kopitar), Switzerland (Josi, Hischier, Niederraiter, Fiala, Meier), Germany (Draisaitl) and Denmark (Eller) is also more or less mitigated on a whole by the fact that a country like Slovakia has seen a steep decline in talent output since the 90s. In the 90s/early 00s they had players like Ziggy Palffy, Peter Bondra, Pavol Demitra, Marian Hossa, Miroslav Satan, Marian Gaborik, Zdeno Chara, and a bunch of other depth guys like Michal Handzus, Josef Stümpel, et cetera. Now they have Tomas Tatar and Richard Panik, and nothing else.

You seem to be conflating the statement "drawing talent from across the world" with something more akin to "drawing talent from the entire world". Of course hockey doesn't deeply penetrate the culture of nation on earth the way a sport like soccer does, but the fact remains that there are currently players in the NHL from 18 countries. It may be a niche sport in a lot of these countries (eg. in Australia where Nathan Walker is from), but there is at least some footprint that leads to some people from that country being exposed to the sport (Australia even has a hockey league of its own) and having the opportunity to learn to play the sport (and modern travel also makes it possible for these people to have access to high-end training in junior systems like the CHL and its feeder leagues). In 1920 for comparison, the NHL had players from merely 3 nationalities: Canada the UK and the US and of that, over 90% were Canadian. Hockey will always remain a niche sport in any country where there isn't freezing weather in winter, just due to the fact that the environment makes it way more likely that people there looking to try a new sport will go out in the warm weather and play another sport instead of seeking out the nearest ice rink (which may not be close), but despite this, it would be a mistake to underestimate how much further Ice hockey's global reach has expanded in the past century. Now if you want to compare hockey's footprint in 2020 with hockey's footprint in 1980 or 1990 then that is a different discussion. However I specifically say 1920 in the post you are responding to.

 

[PaulD]

I’d argue that the top end talent would be as good or better than today while the bottom tier players from back then would be worse.

Agree

 

[PaulD]

This video makes me SO happy. It validates something I’ve been trying to describe for years, without having a way to show it in action:



Start that video at 7:40 to see what I mean.

It is way too easy to look at today’s goalies and say “80s goalies were a joke, they couldn’t even make basic saves”.

Today’s goaltending techniques are reliant on equipment that did not exist in the 1980s. It is flat-out impossible to play a modern style in 1980s style pads. You can see this demonstrated very clearly from 7:40 to 8:30 in the video.

Put today’s goalies on equipment from that era and you will very quickly have:

1) A bunch of guys on IR with knee and throat injuries

2) A new generation of goalies who learn to play the game on their feet rather than on their knees, mirroring the change that happened ~1990

Well said

 

[KirkAlbuquerque]

no. Shut up.

This is one of the more annoying things HF likes to "debate", i'd rather argue whether Auston Matthews is generational or not.

 

[madmike77]

No. In my opinion today's game is much less exciting than it was in the past. It's not the players' fault. It's mostly that teams now play tighter systems focused on defense. The 80s and 90s didn't really have the same kind of structured play.

 

[Civetty]

Depends, It most likely is more difficult for a Canadien or American to make it to NHL because of the extra competetion from European players, but overall, probably not.

 

[boredmale]

Depends, It most likely is more difficult for a Canadien or American to make it to NHL because of the extra competetion from European players, but overall, probably not.

There actually was more Canadians in the NHL in 1988 then in 2021(slightly more but still). The non Canadian players basically fill up the rosters of the 10 expansions teams since then. I do think the average player in the NHL today is better then in the 80s mainly due to better training routines, equipment and the influx of non Canadians all that being said their is something to say about the entertainment level of hockey when you have a bigger spread between the top player on your team and the 18th skater since the top players seemed to shine more when playing the lesser guys in the 80s

 

[BullLund]

Today's hockey probably has the most talent from top to bottom, but the 90's seemed to have a lot of insanely talented guys playing at the elite level. As well as a lot of dudes at the bottom of the league, who wouldn't play in the NHL today.

If you put the best against the best, I wouldn't necessarily bet against players like Gretzky, Lemieux, Jagr, Hasek, Bure, etc. They would still be great today.

 

[Bedards Dad]

Not because of some kind of innate talent they're not.

It's based on skill and how they play the game, which per the OP would be a higher level. No amount of nostalgia is going to change that.

 

[KingsFan7824]

The other day when McDavid got a point, SN showed how he was the tied for 4th fastest to reach that number(in regards to game played). Note...can't remember what the exact number was.

But who was he tied for 4th with? Bobby Orr. Sort of crazy when you think about how good McDavid has been since he started, and that a Dman was able to be just as productive.

Just found it interesting so thought I would share.

Orr revolutionized the position of defense. Then people saw how much a player like that could flip a game, so more kids who could skate and handle the puck were put in defense. Over the years and decades, it doesn't stand out as much as it did when Orr did it because more and more players are expected to be able to skate and push the puck.

Same thing with Gretzky. He was ahead of the pack in terms of anticipation. Then coaches had to devise plans on how to beat him because he destroyed everyone. Him and Lemieux. Now you have whole team systems built on going to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.

No. In my opinion today's game is much less exciting than it was in the past. It's not the players' fault. It's mostly that teams now play tighter systems focused on defense. The 80s and 90s didn't really have the same kind of structured play.

Video. Takes a lot more surprises away. You're not dependent on in person scouts as much. You break a video down to see exactly what a team is doing, and make a counter to it.

Equipment. Easier than ever to throw your body into a shot because of better equipment. Not that injuries don't happen, it's just easier to clog a lane.

And of course concussions. The violence and dirty stuff is what increased the excitement level back in the day. Now that everything is a penalty, suspension, or fine, it makes that primal excitement difficult to duplicate.

Plus the speed. It's harder to hit guys that you can't get ahead of.

 

[Eisen]

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.

The stand up goalie didn't play stand up because he thought it was cool. He did because the equipment was heavy and his knees would have been mush by the end of the 3rd because there was no cushion for them. They would have gladly adopted a different style earlier had it been possible.