I agree a lot.
I studied
scoring distribution within teams some years ago, and posted some results here. Basically, most teams follow about the same distributions within a team. For example, PP icetime matters a lot. And all teams get to play PP.
Even teams like the 1974-75 WSH actually scored fairly many goals. They scored 66 % of the amount of goals the average team scored, and PP goals scored was 75 % of the average team. (Now, in this case their leading scorer finished as low as 73rd in scoring. Similar with Kansas. So bad example in that sense.)
This may also somewhat apply to
Kühnhackl, who I saw was mentioned here. I saw him many times (and with his size he was easy to notice). He was very good, but who knows how he would have done on a team where he would be more of an average player? Even lesser good teams score goals, and someone "must" set them up or score them. Kühnhackl also sometimes got to play his last 3 or so games in tournaments vs the lesser good teams (5th-8th among 8 teams participating), for example in 1978 when he was the leading WC scorer.
I don't remember Kühnhackl as an overall great player.
Here's a good article on him (perhaps posted here already).
International Hockey Legends: Erich Kuhnhackl
I didn't know he was born in Czechoslovakia and moved to West Germany at age 18.
Regarding West German hockey... I seemed as if they usually had the same players playing tournament after tournament. Sometimes that is interpreted as a sign of weak internal competition.
I would personally not put Kühnhackl (or any other West German or German) on a top-200 list, unless it's about honoring those who dominated most in their domestic and national team environment.
I also keep thinking of that French guy...
Bellemare... He sometimes looked very good during international tournaments. He might seem like an above average player on the ice even against the best teams, but would he even have made the team for CAN, SWE, RUS, USA, etc..?
The topic raised here also contributes to the difficulty in ranking the
Soviets. They excelled in every environment; large rink, small rink, vs European style, vs NHL style, on home ice, on away ice, on CSKA/etc vs NHL teams... But... They also usually benefitted from playing with the same familiar teammates, on very good teams. Just like many NHLers, for example on MTL.
Markus Näslund (N)...
I would place Alfredsson clearly ahead of N. Alfredsson always contributed and was better defensively. N is a player that benefitted from playing in an optimal environment (Bertuzzi, Morrison, etc) during his NHL peak. He was however once being voted the NHL's best player, by the players, which complicates things a bit.
I have Mats Näslund ahead of N, and many other Swedes have as well.
Mats Näslund might be underrated among North Americans, who might use words like "retired at age 30" for a player that left the NHL around age 30 to play in Europe and later - at age 34 - won an Olympic Gold medal scoring 7 pts in 8 games. Mats Näslund also once was the leading scorer on a Stanley Cup winning MTL team, during regular season by a large margin and during playoffs by 19 pts to 16. He was a small but very smart player.
(By the way, scoring distribution within a team is another case where
Gretzky and Mario really stood out. Not only did they play on high scoring teams. They actually scored a point on an extremely high percentage of their team's goals, in Gretzky's case sometimes more than 50 %. For duos, Kariya-Selänne was an extreme example.)
