A+ post and I agree with all of it, but I think one big factor that has not been addressed so far in the thread was the rapid expansion of the NHL and how it diluted the overall talent pool. Between 1967 and 1980, the NHL grew from 6 teams to 21 teams, a 350% increase, and it continued growing throughout the 80s and early 90s. This meant that many more players who would have never sniffed NHL ice in a 6 team league were now mainstays on many NHL teams which drastically increased the disparity in skill between the top end players like Gretzky and Lemieux and the rest of the league. They were so much better than most of their opposition that they were able to put up absolutely insane numbers. Imagine if Mcdavid played in a league in which 50% of its players were WHL, ECHL, or QMJHL caliber. That would be a similar environment to what Gretz and Mario encountered in the 80s. Not only were they generational talents to very definition of the word, but their generation also just happened to occur during this transitional period for the league in which they were able to exploit their talents to the maximum extent against vastly inferior opponents due to the ballooning size of the league.
In today's game, there is not nearly the amount of disparity between the very top players and the very bottom, which leaves the very top players a slimmer advantage to work with.
I agree with you about the disparity difference being smaller today between 'top' and 'bottom' players. I think pretty much everyone agrees on that.
But I strongly disagree that the NHL was weaker due to expansion from 1980. I think this is a popular misconception. In my opinion, by far the "weakest" era of NHL clubs was from around 1970 to 1977 or so. In 1967, the NHL grew by 100% from six teams to twelve overnight. However, although this created (obviously) some much weaker teams for the first few years, I think this expansion to 12 teams was about the "correct" number of teams for that era. In other words, expansion was way overdue by then, and having 12 teams just made things about right.
But the NHL kept growing from 1970 (Buffalo, Vancouver, etc.) and then in 1972 the WHA began. By 1975, there were -- count 'em --
32 pro hockey teams in North America. That's more than today.
The worst team of all time in the NHL was probably the 1974-75 Capitals (franchise's first season). How bad were they? Somebody did an analysis on the History board and found that by 1979 (when the WHA ended and four clubs 'merged' into the NHL), EVERY SINGLE PLAYER ON THE 1975 CAPITALS WAS OUT OF PRO-HOCKEY. That's like if we took the 2017-18 Golden Knights, fast forwarded to 2021-22 (two years from today), and not a single guy was good enough to be in the NHL anymore. So, I ask you, if 20 guys were good enough in 1975 but all of them weren't good enough by 1980, how was the League getting weaker?
In fact, the number of pro teams dropped from 1975 (32) to 1980 (21), and then stayed steady until 1991-92. A lot of ex- and future-NHLers were in the WHA.
The 21 teams from 1979-80 was probably
about right, or at least it was a few years later. As I said just up-thread, I do think the c.1979 to 1982 or 1983 period was weaker, but it wasn't because of expansion (actually, a
retraction had occurred, as I've shown). It was probably because skaters were getting younger and younger (18-year-olds drafted from 1979), which generally means they're weaker defensively, and because offense in general (enhanced after exposure to the Soviets in '72 and after) was developing quickly (soon to be enhanced yet more by Gretzky), while defence and goaltending was still stuck in the 1950s' level, without any advancement from then. In fact, goaltending appears to have reached perhaps its weakest median-level around the turn of the 80s.
But I think all of these relative weaknesses were being ironed-out by 1983 or 1984. By then, more and more Americans were coming to the NHL (Langway, Barrasso, Housley, Carpenter, and Lawton as 1st overall draft in '83) along with a stable number of Europeans (started in the 70s, but getting substantial by early 80s, including stars like the Stastny's, Kurri, Lindbergh, etc.). The 21 teams from 1983-ish to 1991 was the perfect number for that time.
Appropriately, as ex-Soviets/Russians started coming to the NHL in 1989-90 and after, the League started expanding again from 1991. I think the 24 teams reached by 1994 (?) was about right for this time, also.
Has the NHL talent-pool expanded since the mid-1990s? I personally don't think the talent pool is any greater than then, but the motivation for young athletes to make the NHL got greater because salaries exploded from the early-90s onward.
As earlier pages in this thread show with numerous examples, we also have to be careful not to confuse 'performance' with potential. As the goldfish grows to suit the size of the aquarium, so athletes change and adapt to their competitive environment. Another good example is Al MacInnis. MacInnis was drafted before Gretzky had ever scored 200 points, wasn't good enough to be an NHL regular for another two-and-a-half years
after that draft, and then was a 1st-team All Star in 2003 -- one year before Ovechkin was drafted. A bunch of guys still playing today (Spezza, Kovalchuk, Bouwmeester, Thornton) were playing then, MacInnis was considered better than all of them that season, yet he wasn't good enough to play in the NHL in 1981-82, 1982-83, or much of 1983-84. Now, obviously I'm not saying the NHL was better in the early-80s than in 2003, but I am saying that any elite athletes of any era will adapt to the new eras (provided conditioning is good).
