well, CHL results speaks otherwise but whatever. if nla now is considered as a hockey force, we should start worrying about hockey. and i watch games. for me level of intensity in shl, khl or extraliga is completely incomparable with that in nla
CHL was won by a mediocre Finnish team last year who didn't even reach semis in Liiga PO, this year Storhamar knocked out Djurgardens and Trinec out of the competition. Salzburg knocked out Vaxjo, Bolzano knocked out HIFK.. Teams blatantly don't care about the CHL results, you can make any conclusions you want out of it. You can make a solid point French league is better than DEL, going by CHL results. Real European hockey powerhouses like Skelleftea, Tappara, Bern, Kometa, Zurich haven't achieved anything in the CHL, ever.
You can think whatever you want about intensity or whatnot point remains that plenty of top line players in the NLA are top line players in the KHL. Or SHL. Plenty of players move back and forth between those leagues with similar levels of success in each. If you look at the number of such players produced by the Liiga or Czech Extraleague it's low, to say the least. After NHL teams take their share of top-end talent, KHL/NLA skim off the rest and those leagues are left with scraps, in general. Liiga is currently lead in scoring by an Allsvenskan guy who couldn't cut it in the AHL. Super old guys are becoming a force there (this happened way earlier in the Czech league) with mediocre European-career players like Kallio or Tuppurainen in the scoring top-10. And the Czech league is even worse, in that regard. I mean Roberts Bukarts who couldn't crack Riga's roster is borderline star player there. Sure those leagues have few good teams at the top but same applies to all the leagues.
Guys like Da Costa, Vey, Omark who are KHL's top scorers, have played in the NLA for a reason.
Regarding the link, somebody in NA isn't knowledge about European hockey? Color me shocked. Surely it will take more than 5 years for the rest of the world to catch up with changes. I mean OHL, is 10th on that list, for Pete's sake, over something like EBEL which is roughly on par with DEL which they have ranked 7th. It's articles like these that further misinform people hence we had those "this OHL kid should make the team he is better than that PPG player from Europe" statements in bunches before last Olympics.
Canada's Olympic team had 4 players from NLA, 0 from Liiga. USA had 5 from NLA, 0 from Liiga. Swedish had 4 from NLA, 0 from Liiga. That should paint the general picture, somewhat, doesn't it?