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Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Not necessarily. Recruiting is like drafting. You can say the team picked player X instead of Y because they think they’ll be better, but that doesn’t mean it will turn out that way. There’s also the fact that a lot of those vacant spots filled by CHLers were vacated by players that have gone on to the NHL, AHL, or graduated. Are they all better than those players?
I think it’s fair to say the talent level might be higher than it otherwise would have been without the CHL imports. I don’t think you can definitively say it is higher, or that it’s the highest it has ever been. It might be the case that when Celebrini the talent level was much higher to the point that far less CHL players would have been recruited. We don’t really know.
And you also have to go back to my previous point about the majority of the players that have come over. Does it really matter to McKenna that Bowling Green has a 21 year older former CHLer on the 4th line that replaced a graduating 4th liner of a similar skillset? Probably not. So blanket generalizations just don’t work.
The talent influx has probably impacted bottom of the roster players far more than top ones, and far more than top CHLer who were regularly dominating these players in their own league anyway and who benefit from some bigger, stronger, meaner players being replaced by fellow teenage CHLers that they’re unlikely to match against.
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Let’s look at the first point. Recruiting becomes far easier when the talent pool is heavily expanded. Let’s add players from what has been regarded as the best development league in the world the CHL to the BCHL and AJHL and all the other provincial junior leagues outside of major. Now let’s take kids playing this level for 2-3 years and allow them to transfer to the NCAA. The 18-19 year ods that used to get spots are being taken up but drafted NHL prospects. Teams have always recruited 18-10 year olds now they can go for the best in addition to the kids just coming up.
Your whole argument is “maybe I don’t know we can’t say for sure so I am going to argue no”
Looking at the entire talent pool that has come over we have recent top 10 picks from the last 2 drafts as well as all the top North American draft eligible prospects. Every one of those guys is better than whoever they were going to replace that player with had they not been able to play in the NCAA