Ok, digging in on this, I'm not positive that I understand all of it to be honest.
I don't get the Eddie Joyal reference. I've already pre-dealt with the WHA top 20 scorers, it definitely has the reverse effect than I think you want here. I mean, we're talking top 20 scorers. That's elite. Most of the guys couldn't do anything in the NHL and then more couldn't hang more than a couple years after the league started to sure itself up. I detailed each one of them. But maybe I'm not getting your angle, which is possible...
- Re: The '68 Expansion vs. the '80 absorption and old players sticking around.
Yeah, that happened in an uncommon way with '80 also. Except, it was shown that the mini-generation after them (your Stoughtons and Rogers's'ss'sss') couldn't hang in the same way...in a mathematically unlikely way:
Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 3 (Secret of the Ooze)
You also highlight how important the sponsorship era and its accompanying development is to creating sustainable and adaptable NHL talent...instead of empty, one-way talents that were taking advantage of bad league conditions. The stars of the 60's had that. The guys that were jumping into the pro ranks at 18, generally didn't...
But...if all that is to say "there's only 4 NHL caliber teams' worth of guys in a 12, 13, 14-team WHA", I wouldn't call that unreasonable. We won't know if it's right or not until we roll up our sleeves...but that seems fine.
So, if I'm interpreting that correctly...we collectively don't need to do the "can you BELIEVE it 32 teams?!?!" thing any more, right? In the same way that no one said "54 TEAMS!" when the KHL formed and started swiping players in ~2010...
What was the expansion talent pool?
The question we run into expansion is
...but how many legit NHL teams could you have formed out of that league?
I tried rather bluntly to point this out a few years ago:
Team 1968 vs Team 1980
In 1968, the AHL/CHL/WHL didn’t have enough scoring talent for one NHL team, let alone 6. The NHL wasn’t 100% efficient at getting all of the top talent to play in the league, but they got most of them.
You looked at the Top 20 scorers in the WHA and were disappointed. Take a look at these guys and be sad that you think the 1966 AHL was better than the WHA:
1966-67 AHL Leaders
Some of them weren't even invited to the NHL when there was a doubling of jobs.
As for Blaine Stoughton and Eddie Joyal, if we’re saying that Eddie Joyal is elite when he’s 20th in in points in 12 team league, why is Stoughton not when he’s 22nd in points and 6th in goals in 1981-82, in year 3 of the post-merger? He drops to 36th in points and 15th in goals in 1982-83. In 1983-84 with only 23 goals around the trade deadline, he loses his spot to a bigger, younger, faster Sylvain Turgeon – who was 19 and wouldn’t have been allowed to play before the 1980s. (Dumping a $200k (maybe $300k?) contract was also a key consideration). How was Eddie Joyal, the Wayne Gretzky of the class of 68, better than that?
Blaine Stoughton has a hard time in 1984, because once his scoring touch is gone, he's expendable. If he'd been around in 1972, someone would have taken a shot at him. After all, the elite Eddie Joyal is hanging around with 21 points in 70 games and a -43. Since 44 points in 68 games was enough to get Stoughton banished to the AHL, I'm willing to bet 1972 Eddie Joyal doesn't make the 1984 NHL, but 1984 Stoughton probably finds a job in the smaller 1972 NHL. (I mean if young Stoughton leads the Maple Leafs in playoff scoring in 1975, and saves their bacon against the Kings, why wouldn't a more accomplished Stoughton get a shot?)
...and a player that still could have been playing junior broke the assists and points record.
...and one team won all the Stanley Cups.
...and a Minnesota high school d-man would be a point per game player at 18.
...and soon a Mass. high school goalie would win a Vezina at age 18.
Which isn't to excuse the mid-70's at all...
18 year old players found success in the 1980s NHL?
Good.
They probably still could have succeeded in the 1970s NHL, but the league minimum was 20-years old. The lack of teenage success in the pre 1980s NHL wasn’t because of a superior on-ice product, it was because the NHL was blocking the participation of teenagers by rule.
Barrasso winning a Vezina is part skill and part good fortune. He was good. But he also played on one of those 6-8 teams that almost always had good GAA numbers. Buffalo was 1 PPOA away from facing the fewest PP chances against in the NHL. The goalies on winning teams were in a 2-man rotation, and didn’t put up big numbers (Fuhr’s 30 wins led the NHL). If you believe this Norris fella, Barrasso played slightly easier minutes than the league average, while Bob Sauve played harder minutes, which also exaggerated the gap between Barrasso and his backup.
BUFFALO SABRES GOALTENDING HISTORY: YEAR-BY-YEAR
The 1980s NHL had access to talent pools that did not exist in the expansion era.
They had access to younger players.
They had access to European players and a new American talent stream. 0 Swedes and Finns were in the NHL in 1968, and unlike Australia, they have managed to produce a ton of NHL-calibre talent.
They had an unusually strong cohort of players starting to play that shortened the careers of all those guys with 1950s birthdays by outcompeting them, with the best of the 79-84 generation continuing to be high end players into the late 1990s.
When there were 30 North American teams in 1976-77, that debuting cohort had 12 players make it to 1986-87:
1976-77 NHL Debuts | Hockey-Reference.com (11 there + Morris Lukowich from the WHA).
When there were 21 teams in 1979-80, 38 debuting players made it to 1989-90, and 22 were still playing the year after the last of the 76-77 guys (Carlyle) was gone.
1979-80 NHL Debuts | Hockey-Reference.com
From here:
How inflated were Bobby Hull WHA stats?
Exhibition games aside. The WHA went 189-331-120 (.389 pts%) over the next two seasons (including games that had to produce two points for a WHA squad) and many of the top WHA players had their production levels significantly reduced or flaked out almost entirely...despite the NHL being at about its lowest point in terms of league quality since WWII...
The 1980 Whalers made the playoffs fair and square, without a special expansion division. The 1981 Edmonton Oilers also managed to sweep the 1981 Montreal Canadiens. The Expansion 6 didn't win a series until the 1974 Flyers won the Cup.
The 1982 Nordiques would go to the conference finals. The 1983 Oilers go the Finals, and the 1984 team wins the Cup.
Again, by the equivalent point in time the 1968 teams hadn't won a playoff series.
The Jets...were in the wrong division after 1981 to help me out in this argument. Although again, look at the credit Mike Liut gets for turning around the Blues and imagine what WInnipeg could do if they were able to land one of the 3 good WHA goalies instead of getting the Blues mediocre backup Ed Staniowski.
When there were 3x more Russians in the NHL in 1999 (or whatever) than there are now...was it better? And now, it's worse? Of course not. Vladimir Chebaturkin did not improve the league. Pavel Bure did though.
Yep. And the 1968 expansion gave us a half of a league full of Chebaturkins.
That's why 40 year old Howe is a 100 point scorer. Records fall, and they all fall to the old guard.
In the early 1980s, none of the stars sets a significantly better personal best, (except for Mike Bossy.)
There was a Gretzky and a Howe and a Nilsson in the WHA. And if they were able to keep future Pearson-winner Mike Liut, future Jennings winner Pat Riggin, and future 1982 Cup Finalist Richard Brodeur, (or even Nilsson for that matter) they'd have likely done a lot better collectively as a regular season threat. Would they not be Bures, instead of Chebaturkins? How many Expansion 6 players won the Hart or the Pearson or any other significant trophy?
In year 4, Bill White became the first non Original 6 player to make a post-season AS team, in 1972. At the equivalent point, the 1982-83 First All-Star Team consists of Mike Bossy, Pete Peeters, and WHAers Gretzky, Messier, Langway, and Howe, with Michel Goulet on the 2nd team.
Why not also look at WHA talent that came in earlier as well? Rejean Houle was a good enough two-way forward they played him with Gainey and Jarvis. John Tonelli was a contributor to an 1980 Isles that won the Cup against a team that former WHA-er Ken Linseman led in points. Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson helped turn the Rangers into contenders.
All of them are better than Gord Labossiere.
After all, there were plenty of one-way talents in the 1970s NHL too. A lot of those guys couldn't score at all.
The average team scores 209 goals in 1967. That goes down to 206 goals in 1968. Was the league about the same in quality or perhaps slightly better defensively? Of course not.
In 1968 every O6 team is at 209 GF or more. The E6 teams are between 153 goals and 200. Because East teams play each other more often, the awful Red Wings are the worst defensive team in the NHL. Against the O6, it's almost 80s level scoring against the Wings: 3.82 GF/G for O6 teams. The other half of the league? 2.75 GF/G, with 4 of 6 teams at 2.5 goals per game or under.
There's a n illusion of good defense in that E6 vs E6 games are low scoring. They usually get blitzed by O6 teams. But because they can't even score on each other, the overall league GPG goes down.
While the later 1979-80 expansion would see the new guys have enough scoring talent to score on bad existing teams, the 67-68 expansion saw AHLers enter the league who exhibited negligible scoring skills.
As the Sea Captain might say, "Aye. Not a Bure in the bunch."
