Funny this thread got bumped- quite recently, I had a "before & after" look of the Centers as rated in this project and Centers as rated in the top-100/top-200 projects of a little while back.
Taking the obvious one first- the process of rating Connor McDavid is kind of like pegging an in-flight missile by its position is in the sky right now. We're guaranteed to miss... but trying to "lead" it is an exercise in speculation. Unlike inanimate solid-motion objects, career-paths don't follow predictable, repeatable laws of physics. Of this, I am convinced- if it's McDavid's fate to not win a Cup, he will go down as the best player to never have done so- and it will be one of those uncommon times where 'ainec' will be appropriate.
Our "with-a-bullet" rises, pretty much exclusively due to the hockey that's been played over the last decade-or-so, are Crosby [22 to 5], Malkin [40 to 20], the aforementioned McDavid [gleam-in-eye to 42... and (predictably enough) looking woefully obsolete already], Bergeron [g-i-a to 46], Toews [g-i-a to 51], Kopitar [g-i-a to 53] and Stamkos [g-i-a to 58].
On a 60-deep list, new additions necessitate departures-- and the departures are Larionov, Sittler, Keats, Lemaire, and Colville. I don't think any of these names are jarringly inconsistent with inevitable attrition. So- what's different?
In the top two-dozen, except for our Southern Hemisphere aqua-birds, not much. Oh, there are little tweaks here-and-there (most notably Mikita dropping three places (one of the three being rightfully occupied by Crosby, so how radical a move is that, anyway?!). Looking back, I'd say the WHOLE TIER occupied by Nighbor (at six) to Cyclone Taylor (at twelve) falls safely within de gustibus non est disputandum territory. Next drop of significance is Joe Thornton, slipping four places, with Malkin surging ahead of him, and Crosby lapping him a couple times. So- like Mikita, a significant portion of his drop is simply better players coming along. [That said, I don't think his hang-on act did any favors to his legacy... but that's just me.]
Eric Lindros ROSE from 38 to 31, by dint of nothing he did on-the-ice between then and now. In this case, I think that some panoramic detachment from the drafts, hold-outs, parental involvements, and franchise actions that were arguably more puerile than anything camp Lindros ever did have served to allow us a fairer viewing.
Put glibly, Eric Lindros and Norm Ullman roughly traded places, Lindros rising seven and Ullman dropping nine. One day, someone should do a "standard deviation" study of the Ullman rankings, the way I did for (most notably) Fedorov. He really seems to divide opinions, too. His ranking might be contingent upon which camp shows up more prominently and argues more forcefully on any given panel.
Russel Bowie rose from 44 to 36, which is a more significant jump than even the raw numbers show- on account of the Crosby-Malkin thing. Just how much credit should be given to someone who has a case for the best hockey talent pre-Cyclone Taylor? I think under-rating him is a greater danger than over-rating him. I'm at peace with this reconsideration.
However, the player who got by far the biggest Nerf MorningStar was Jean Ratelle. The drop was fourteen points [45 to 59] and the "better players have come along since" only explains half of it. [And even at that, I'd say that the assertion is arguable in the case of Stamkos. Kopitar, and Toews.] The flippant way of explaining this is to attribute a dichotomy between those who'd seen him play vs. those who hadn't. Bill James famously said "all else fades before the numbers." I believe Ratelle to have been a better player than his numbers indicate. Still, there's more numerical research that can be done...and it'll have to be- in order for Ratelle to maintain his place as even a middle-of-pack Hall-of-Famer (or to buttress the idea that maybe he's a lower-third guy, after all).