Thompson is better than Heatley by a large margin defensively, a smaller margin offensively, and does not bring the attitude problems Heatley does.
You're joking, right? You consider Paul Thompson a better offensive player than Dany Heatley? By looking uncritically at his top-10's, I suppose. Here are the two players' respective scoring peaks:
Thompson: 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 10th, 10th
Heatley: 4th, 4th, 9th, 15th, 15th
I shouldn't have to tell you how different the levels of scoring competition are here. Thompson's three best seasons all came starting in 1935-36 in a weak NHL after the 1920's greats had passed their primes. The best scorer during Paul Thompson's peak was Sweeney Schriner. Given how close their scoring credentials actually are, and how far apart the leagues were at the time they competed, I consider Heatley's scoring finishes unconditionally better. Given his predilections, your partner would have to do some real gymnastics to argue that old-timer Thompson was on Heatley's level as a scorer, much less superior.
Heatley was the better offensive player, Thompson the better defensive player. In a vacuum, I'm not really sure who was the better player.
IMO Fredrickson is somewhere in the Thompson-Recchi range, but his PCHA years/the time period he played in makes it difficult to compare.
Have you paid attention to any of the information on Fredrickson? The guy was probably the second best western league forward after Taylor, and is up there with Cy Denneny as the best offensive forward of his time. Using my favored notation (with percentage gap to next best scorer on team in [brackets]), here are Denneny and Fredrickson's respective peaks (1920-21 to 1926-27):
Denneny: 100 [130] - 126, 100 [83] - 117, 98 [74] - 113, 100 [48] - 110, 100 [44] - 109, 104 [4] - 105, 100 [-18] - 96, 79 [-27] - 74
Fredrickson: 136 [108] - 158, 100 [75] - 115, 91 [114] - 114, 100 [60] - 112, 96 [32] - 102, 86 [29] - 92*, 57 [41] - 65
*indicates consolidated NHL totals*
It should be noted that the brief "three league effect" catches both players equally, as both were at their primes at the time, so there is no distortion here for the players relative to one another. It is up to the reader to decide what he thinks of the relative strength of the NHL vs western leagues during the period.