Ok here goes:
Coaching:
Scotty Bowman is among the best. 1200+ wins at .657 in the regular season and 9 cups.
vs.
Alain Vigneault.. has a Jack Adams and recently passed 500 wins so it isn't like he is a nobody, and he has a strong strategist in John Muckler (who also gives the staff a Stanley Cup win as co-coach) but..
coaching is clearly a strong advantage for Guelph.
Top 6
WIL's two best offensive threats are split up so lets look at the Top 6 rather than strictly by line to get an idea here. I'll put their VsX in along the way for reference:
John LeClair - Howie Morenz - Martin St. Louis
Gaye Stewart - Jacques Lemaire - Bobby Rousseau
vs
Brendan Shanahan - Mickey MacKay - Jaromir Jagr
Kevin Stevens - Joe Thornton - Cecil Dillon
On the first lines the best offensive players are clearly Jagr (114.6) and Morenz (102.8). Jagr has a solid advantage offensively here.
Morenz held the puck a lot like Jagr with his possession game, but he is clearly a better traditional defensive player as well -- so he is probably the better overall player. Lets say that, roughly,
Morenz = Jagr overall.
WIL's first line relies on Jagr a lot because Mickey MacKay is a lower end second liner in this (52 in the centers project), who is obviously there as much to help out away from the puck as for his offense.
St. Louis (92.9) and LeClair (82.1) are clearly rounding out
a far superior 1st line for Guelph both ways to MacKay (pre-consolidation) and Shanahan (79.3).
On the second lines things the wingers are practically equivalents of each other:
Stewart has a slightly better VsX (73.1) than Stevens (67.8) but Stewart also gets the * for wartime play so it is probably a wash. Both are the aggressive shooter type wingers with relatively short careers. I don't think either was anything to write home about defensively.
Meanwhile on the right sides Dillon (78.4) and Rousseau (76) are smart players who were strong both offensively and defensively. The big difference is that Dillon is weighted towards shooting, which works well with Thornton, and Rousseau is weighted towards passing, which works well with Lemaire's slapshot.
So the second lines hinge on Thornton (94.4) and Lemaire (75.5). Obviously a huge gap offensively between them, at first glance.
Lemaire closes the overall gap some with his defensive play, where I have no doubt he was superior to Thornton, even though Thornton has improved as he has gotten older (Lemaire did too).
Lemaire + Rousseau in my mind make this line clearly better overall defensively than WIL's 2nd line which relies more on Dillon imo.
On the offensive side, one of the interesting things about Lemaire that came up in the HOH Top Center project was that
Lemaire's VsX probably underrates him due to his coaches having deep Montreal teams where they could specialize more. It appears that Lemaire played less PP time than other top centers of the time and played more ES (I've saved him for ES here in the ATD so that he can do his best both ways at ES):
Again, showing VsX for a guy who saw limited power play time would underrate him, which is why I didn't bother going through the calculations. (The number was too low to appear on hockey outsider's tables).
This is a better metric:
Adjusted even strength points per season over a player's best 7 seasons
The numbers are only available for post-expansion seasons, so I'm only including post-expansion players.
Sedin 63
Turgeon 60
Lemaire 57
Roenick 55
Lafontaine 53
...
But the thing that stands out to me after going through the data? C1958's contention that crazy genius Scottie Bowman did not give Lemaire #1 center PP time has statistical backing. His even strength scoring looks to have been on a similar level to Turgeon and Roenick - that is if overpass's "adjusted even strength scoring" formula isn't missing a huge variable, but I've never seen reason to believe that it would overrate 70s guys.
And unlike Pete Mahovlich, who saw a massive bump in even strength scoring with Lafleur, Jacques Lemaire was mostly unaffected. His best 2 seasons (1973, 1978) had 67 adjusted even strength points each - once with Lafleur, once without him. His next best season (1972 - 59) was without Lafleur, and then he has 2 seasons of 53 (1969, 1977), one with Lafleur, one without him.
On the whole I think that WIL's second line is better offensively by some degree - depending on how you want to count Lemaire's ES offense - and ours is better defensively.
Overall for Top 6 forwards I think Guelph has the better set of forwards. ie. a first line that enjoys a far larger advantage than the (offensive) advantage West Island has on the second.
Third Lines
Don Marshall - Blair Russel - Tony Amonte
vs.
Alex Tanguay - Anze Kopitar - Milan Hejduk
To me Amonte (73.3) and Hejduk (73.8) are probably for the most part a wash, and as the trigger men for these lines they are the most easily comparable.
Kopitar (73.6) is one of the best centers in the world, a Selke finalist, and has led his team in scoring for 8 years straight while leading the Stanley Cup winner in scoring twice.. With all due respect to older era players, I'll take him over Russel with his placements in a weak era and retro Selkes as the best Shadow in the horse drawn era.
Tanguay (72.5) and Marshall (-) are polar opposites. Tanguay is a quick offensive player who is responsible defensively and Marshall is a top notch defensive player who chips on offensively.
Our 3rd line doesn't really drop off offensively or defensively much at all from our 2nd and still has a big, great, two-way center in the middle which I know Bowman would love.
In my heavily biased opinion I think our third line is better in our team concept than WILs -- but I do think that theirs would probably be better in a shutdown defensive role which is not what ours will be doing.
Fourth Lines
Miroslav Satan - Fred Stanfield - Bobby Gould
vs
Dennis Hull - Claude Giroux - Eric Nesterenko
Hull is more highly regarded and has the 2nd Team All Star but Dennis Hull (65.2) < Satan (68.3) as an offensive producer. Each of them has two top tens in goals too.
Giroux (69.8 - if I am adding this year correctly) has had a tremendous start to his career but he doesn't meet the benchmarks we usually like to see with 7 prime years. He has just completed his 7th season and added his 5th top 10 in assists and 3rd in points. Stanfield (66.2) has 4 top 10s in assists and 1 top 10 in points so he isn't too far behind. Giroux is better but his longevity is holding him back at the moment in an ATD sense.
Gould and Nesternko are a couple of PK / checker specialists who also chip in a little offensively. Nesternko of course much more highly regarded since he played before we have data.
Two fourth lines with strong fourth line centers and pretty similar in setup..
I think due to Nesterenko and Giroux's peak, WIL's fourth would be regarded by most people as a bit better. Pretty close though.
Defensemen in next post before I lose all this..
