Does Expansion Increase or Dilute the NHL's Talent Pool?

[Fordy]

much like qbs in the nfl, there just aren't any elite goalies right now

 

[BraveCanadian]

Yes, of course it dilutes it when you are adding top level spots in an increasingly exclusive sport

 

[Fatass]

Imagine the types of games we would see if the Blume of talent was what we have now but only 12 teams. All players would be skilled, fast, and aggressive. Of course adding more teams dilutes the talent.

 

[tarheelhockey]

But I don't think that's the only measurement, with expansion a team's worth of guys theoretically moves up to the NHL level, and same to the AHL, ECHL etc. Players being able to play at higher levels when they wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity is bound to result in some or most of those players improving

Perhaps it benefits those specific individual players, though it has to be noted that the guys getting those opportunities are those who previously would not have been good enough to play in the NHL. That’s the definition of diluting the league. For it to be otherwise, the average player being called up would need to become better than the average NHL’er (i.e. a top 6 forward or top 3 defenseman) and we all know that ain’t happening.

At the AHL level, you’re taking away the 20 best players and replacing them with 20 former ECHL players. Does this make the league more talented? Definitely no.

 

[Jared Dunn]

Perhaps it benefits those specific individual players, though it has to be noted that the guys getting those opportunities are those who previously would not have been good enough to play in the NHL. That’s the definition of diluting the league. For it to be otherwise, the average player being called up would need to become better than the average NHL’er (i.e. a top 6 forward or top 3 defenseman) and we all know that ain’t happening.

At the AHL level, you’re taking away the 20 best players and replacing them with 20 former ECHL players. Does this make the league more talented? Definitely no.

But I think my point about the Golden Knights applies here, outside of the truly elite franchise level players, I feel like the margin is often so thin between other players. I think there's a lot of guys who have definitely been good enough to play in the NHL and their situation gets in the way, or guys playing lower in the lineup that could effectively step into a top six or top 4 role

I guess I wouldn't argue that it increases the pool though, but I don't think the dilution would be really noticeable or impactful unless it was like 5 or more teams at a time

 

[tarheelhockey]

But I think my point about the Golden Knights applies here, outside of the truly elite franchise level players, I feel like the margin is often so thin between other players. I think there's a lot of guys who have definitely been good enough to play in the NHL and their situation gets in the way, or guys playing lower in the lineup that could effectively step into a top six or top 4 role

I guess I wouldn't argue that it increases the pool though, but I don't think the dilution would be really noticeable or impactful unless it was like 5 or more teams at a time

It’s not immediately noticeable partly because of how the changes are administered. We get the expansion draft which consists of a lot of shenanigans with players who wouldn’t normally be on the team anyway, such as when a team sends a draft pick to ensure a scrub gets chosen. So it’s not like everyone suddenly loses their 20th best player, it’s more like a series of dominoes start falling which will take years to produce a real conclusion. And then the expansion team, which in most cases is a fairly bad squad composed of cast-offs, serves as a sort of containment area for the effect of dilution. They might inflate their opponents’ stats a bit, but in general everyone carries on with more-or-less the roster they always expected to have.

It’s not till the expansion team starts acquiring real talent that the impact starts to really spread — but even at that, it’s kind of abstract and not really talked about. Who would Matty Beniers and Joey Daccord be playing for if Seattle didn’t exist? Nobody knows, so we don’t really think about it much. But if we had an actual definitive answer, say we knew that the Blue Jackets would moved up and gotten Beniers, then there would be a much more tangible feeling that Columbus is a worse team because of Seattle’s presence. And there would probably be some resentment attached to that.

It looks like the current expansion era, starting with Vegas, will result in 4 teams being added over the course of about a decade. We won’t really feel the sting of that in real-time, but ask a team like Detroit or Ottawa how they’d feel about adding 4 current players from other teams for free. Framing it that way makes the dilution effect easier to conceptualize.

 

[ijuka]

I mean, there are more players playing so the talent pool obviously is diluted. The people who disagree with this just don't understand maths.

I think that currently the talent pool is so diluted that just about every lineup has like half a dozen players who truly should not even be playing in NHL. And they would not if the team count was more reasonable, like 24.

 

[3074326]

I think recent expansion has proven that there are always players who will thrive when given more of an opportunity, and I don't think the call-up player is that far off most fourth liners in the NHL. The level of dilution is exaggerated.

 

[Rorschach]

It's obviously both. Adding more player jobs gives more chances to players whose ability is not as promising as others.

Those players could be, those players who need more of a chance to play themselves into NHL players while receiving NHL coaching/training, thus increasing the talent pool.

Those players who still couldn't play themselves into the NHL, thus proving their "not as promising" scouting report, thus diluting the talent.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Indeed, which makes it seem all the more likely the OP phrased the question in bad faith. There really aren’t people saying ‘expansion strengthens the talent pool’ and posing the question this way was a straw man to get the OP’s lopsided and desired result.

The argument is, and always has been, does the natural growth and strengthening of the worldwide talent pool outpace the momentary dilution of occasional expansions? As in, over the long haul, does the average nhl team, average nhl player, actually become less talented decade over decade because of expansion? Or does it become more talented because the worldwide talent pool is increasing faster than expansion is diluting?

There ARE two sides to the talent dilution argument. This question, as worded, does not address that.

Your post is contradictory and no, I’m not arguing in bad faith. You’re essentially saying that decades from now the talent pool will align with the dilution we’re going to experience this current decade.

This is hardly a guarantee and if I had to guess you’re extrapolating based on the league differences between the O6 era and the 70’s on today’s game. This is flawed because there was a tremendous infusion of European talent and Russian talent that has been steadily coming into the NHL from the 80’s and 90’s onward. This isn’t going to happen again. The best players in the world already play in the NHL. Unless countries like China, Australia, or England start churning out pro hockey talent, which would be cool as f***, there isn’t an untapped market.

The NCAA and USHL seem to be getting better year by year which is great but that hardly will account for all of these now open roster spots. I just don’t see it. If Vegas wasn’t a fluke then we’d be seeing Seattle be a top 3 seed in their division on a yearly basis at least, which they haven’t once done.

Of the two outcomes here, that the injection of 2-4 more expansion teams giving us 34-36 teams…

1) that the opening of these 40-80ish roster spots will allow more players to thrive due to previously unavailable opportunities now being there. That the league will be bursting with talent and we’ll have 24+ strong teams vying for the playoffs with untapped star players everywhere now realizing their potential…

Or

2) that we’ll see these players currently not in the league aren’t here for a reason. That they cannot physically and mentally keep up with the pace and rigor and talent level of the NHL

…I think it’s very clearly option 2. I think superstar players are going to feast on these borderline NHLers. I think there’s going to be less parity and a bottleneck of great teams obliterating 2-dozen mediocre to crappy teams and it’s going to be a boring and predictable league.

Last year I watched these borderline NHL talents on the Blackhawks. Guys like: Entwhistle, Tinordi, Dickinson, Donato, Guttman, etc…were given every chance to succeed and they top out at 30pt players at best. Guys with high draft pedigree like Kurashev and Reichel struggled as well with all their chances, that which there were MANY. Opportunity isn’t the problem. These guys are simply not talented enough and now we’re going to open up 80 more roster spots for guys like this.

It’ll make the league worse, not better.

 

[biturbo19]

Mathematically, it's literally a dilution of the talent pool.

It can incorporate more "skilled players". It makes room for more fillers in the Top-6/9 who might have a high skill level in some respects, but aren't remotely complete players.

That's where it serves a double action as diluting the talent pool...while simultaneously increasing the scoring rates. Because one of the rarest skillsets, is genuine matchup pairing shutdown defencemen. Already spread thin, every team wants more of them...but expansion continues to press that issue and we've seen what has started to happen to the price of them.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I don't think it dilutes the league in the way blokes here think. There's a lot of players that aren't getting the shot they probably deserve and a team looking to start from scratch that will give that player a chance isn't a bad thing at all.

The NHL has so many players that are in other leagues over seas and the NHL and then there's other talents that are out there that don't see an opportunity and what not. I don't see it as a bad thing necessarily. Is it tough to have 34 teams instead of 32? Sure. I think it kind of messes with the games a little more because either you play some teams a lot less or you increase games but I think if you increase games you gotta increase roster limits as well, even if by allowing an extra forward and defense to travel with the team.

The playoff race would be a blood bath and I'm not sure if they should tinker with the format to accommodate 34 teams.

But in the end the big names are big names because they got a chance. It doesn't mean the league is lacking in any new big names and there's more being drafted each year.

Mathematically, it's literally a dilution of the talent pool.

It can incorporate more "skilled players". It makes room for more fillers in the Top-6/9 who might have a high skill level in some respects, but aren't remotely complete players.

That's where it serves a double action as diluting the talent pool...while simultaneously increasing the scoring rates. Because one of the rarest skillsets, is genuine matchup pairing shutdown defencemen. Already spread thin, every team wants more of them...but expansion continues to press that issue and we've seen what has started to happen to the price of them.

The price of those types of defensemen or even the cost of them has been a thing for a while. Well before most recent two in Seattle and Vegas.

 

[biturbo19]

The price of those types of defensemen or even the cost of them has been a thing for a while. Well before most recent two in Seattle and Vegas.

Sure, quality matchup defencemen have always been scarce and always will be. But that's exactly half the equation whereby league expansion leads to talent dilution. Everyone always thinks about it from the "skill side"...but arguably the bigger impact, is that expansion leads to an even more scarce supply of actual shutdown defencemen to counteract skill, spread among a larger number of teams.


On the other end...it makes less talented offensive players more viable, because they're facing less resilient defensive players, but that again...is still a process of dilution. It allows less talented players to be more effective. It's talent dilution.


Whether that's good or bad for the product overall...is an entirely different question. It's already helped spur a new era of scoring. For better or worse. I'd expect further expansion to continue to track on the same trajectory. We're already entering an era where teams are trying to pivot toward big mobile defencemen and even more two-way center-centric models. But there really just is not enough to go around.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Dilutes

Not to mention makes even more regular season games meaningless.

No Bettman, I don’t care to watch Pittsburgh play the Nebraska f***ing Cornholers at 3pm on a Saturday.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Sure, quality matchup defencemen have always been scarce and always will be. But that's exactly half the equation whereby league expansion leads to talent dilution. Everyone always thinks about it from the "skill side"...but arguably the bigger impact, is that expansion leads to an even more scarce supply of actual shutdown defencemen to counteract skill, spread among a larger number of teams.


On the other end...it makes less talented offensive players more viable, because they're facing less resilient defensive players, but that again...is still a process of dilution. It allows less talented players to be more effective. It's talent dilution.


Whether that's good or bad for the product overall...is an entirely different question. It's already helped spur a new era of scoring. For better or worse. I'd expect further expansion to continue to track on the same trajectory. We're already entering an era where teams are trying to pivot toward big mobile defencemen and even more two-way center-centric models. But there really just is not enough to go around.

I'm going to disagree (lets just leave it at agree to disagree because I think you make a lot of valid points as well) and you're entitled to your opinion on this as also being about as valid as I feel mine is in this.

Because I think with how many players this league has that are either being shoved down to the AHL or going on unclaimed, leaving for Europe, so and so popping up as the next undiscovered talent, undrafted, change of scenery, etc, I think it's fine for the league. Because sure it takes some time for these teams to build up better talent and lessen the "dilution" if you will, but it is something that can be done and we've seen it since the last few expansions, it takes some time but it gets there.

Personally I am not really that keen on seeing more teams just yet, I would wait a while before it happens, at least not in the next 5 years. At best, I would rather see places like Atlanta get a team back, places that were done dirty because of piss poor ownership but were actually doing fairly decent attendance wise and just needed better ownership. The league protects certain teams and allows them to figure out, but then doesn't give that benefit to other places which is just absolute bullshit.

Arizona got the longest rope, so did Edmonton and countless others when they were busted as franchises financially but Atlanta has some bent owners that didn't even really want the blokes that were trying to make it better, to make it better, only to have the league just blatantly allow them to move immediately is a joke. But if Atlanta getting a team again means they need to expand, fine, they deserve a clean slate team.

 

[daver]

Mathematically, it's literally a dilution of the talent pool.

At the risk of being pedantic, expansion means there will be more "NHL level" players so one could conclude that mathematically, the talent pool for NHL players has literally expanded.

 

[daver]

If Vegas wasn’t a fluke then we’d be seeing Seattle be a top 3 seed in their division on a yearly basis at least, which they haven’t once done.

Vegas' success was unprecedented in North American pro sports most likely. Seattle's lack of success is more normal for an expansion team and, frankly, irrelevant to your argument.

And your metric of flukiness is strange. How many teams have been a Top 3 seed in their division every year since 21/22? Five? Six?

 

[Vegan Knight]

Indeed, which makes it seem all the more likely the OP phrased the question in bad faith. There really aren’t people saying ‘expansion strengthens the talent pool’ and posing the question this way was a straw man to get the OP’s lopsided and desired result.

The argument is, and always has been, does the natural growth and strengthening of the worldwide talent pool outpace the momentary dilution of occasional expansions? As in, over the long haul, does the average nhl team, average nhl player, actually become less talented decade over decade because of expansion? Or does it become more talented because the worldwide talent pool is increasing faster than expansion is diluting?

There ARE two sides to the talent dilution argument. This question, as worded, does not address that.

Expansion definitely plays a role increasing the talent level. It also doesn't have to decrease the average talent level at all to start.

Your argument seems the flawed one, possibly in bad faith, but I won't guess at intentions.

Talent doesn't just increase out of nowhere, what you call the 'natural' growth and strengthening of the worldwide talent pool. Hockey doesn't grow by itself in nature.

It's fostered and grown by individuals in organizations, and having more organizations at the three highest levels in North America certainly plays a part in that man-made growth.

In fact, the pressure created in the space by having more money at the very top in the industry, creating more incentive for individuals who can get very highly paid positions throughout two more NHL, AHL and ECHL organizations, have a pretty much guaranteed chance of becoming big drivers for the continued growth of the game.

The extra opportunity for high level play to increase skills for more players, the extra incentive of more scouts and coaches to innovate better ways to find and develop talent, the extra high level alumni created by these organizations who continue to work in the industry, the local hockey at different levels that's sponsored by new teams with big resources and the new fans that are created all contribute massively to growth of the game and the talent pool.

 

[RedHawkDown]

I don’t really see why we need more teams. The NHL already has more than the NBA and that’s the closest comparable sport.

 

[dukeofjive]

Every team has ahl level talent player on there rosters , not sure how anyone can claim that adding more teams won’t affect the quality of the sport.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Vegas' success was unprecedented in North American pro sports most likely. Seattle's lack of success is more normal for an expansion team and, frankly, irrelevant to your argument.

And your metric of flukiness is strange. How many teams have been a Top 3 seed in their division every year since 21/22? Five? Six?

There would be some level of obvious success we could look at Seattle and point to if it were true the NHL is bursting with talent and we just need to give these players a chance.

 

[Crow]

It increases the talent pool over all (marginally) by way of adding more talented AAAA players. It also dilutes the amount of talent on any given team.

 

[BLNY]

Short and mid term, it dilutes. Remains to be seen if it has a benefit long-term. We're seeing more players from the US, but numbers are going down elsewhere.

 

[Golden_Jet]

expansion rules are you can protect

7-3-1 , you lose either a #8 forward or 4th D or a backup goalie

Or 4-4-1 , you lose a #5 forward, a 5th D or a backup goalie

And replace them with a non NHL player.
Then repeat for every new expansion.

Yea you are diluting.

 

[Albatros]

Imagine the types of games we would see if the Blume of talent was what we have now but only 12 teams. All players would be skilled, fast, and aggressive. Of course adding more teams dilutes the talent.

That’s a big if, the revenued would be lower and top players likely paid less, which would make other options like Switzerland more appealing to some.