Not sure I understand.
For what it's worth, I look mostly at strength of overall player pool, which obviously slants highly towards NHL and then the leagues just beneath it (AHL and the big 4 or 5 euro leagues). Actual best-on-best would be useful, but that hasn't happened in a long time or with the current generation of players (making older results irrelevant other than in a historical context), even there I apply a bit of caution as there is a bit of luck involved since you are stuck with the team you have more or less and it is not always a perfect fit (England Football in the mid-2000s is a great example).
To give a hockey example, if a country like Russia were to have something like 5 of the top 15 or so goaltenders in the world, that would speak very highly for their player pool, but the only benefit in a best-on-best tournament is it gives them a lot of potential options to pick from, when the knockout round commences, there's still only one guy in net, so a country like Finland that has one Saros and maybe less certainty behind him isn't at any sort of disadvantage there because they only need one (so long as he's healthy).
Hypo best-on-best isn't useless, but without actual is just educated guesswork.
