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.