Adam says:
 
>Take a look at the ECAC teams in that time span and the players that they had
>and compare them to the rosters today... even the poorer ECAC teams had
>players they could hang their hats on and say they did well as pros.
 
And has a list of good ECAC players from 1885-1990 that is indeed very
persuasive.
 
I would note is that lot of these players came into the ECAC relatively
unheralded (several of them were not drafted) and developed rather nicely.
Also, my memory may be off but in looking at this list while there were a
lot of NHL draft picks I don't think many (any?) of them were in the first
two rounds.  The talent drop off from the first couple of rounds to say the
6th round is fairly dramatic and I was in general thinking of the former
not the latter in my original post.  My conjecture is that the selected
teams in the other leagues got more higher round players as recruits in the
past.  I would agree that the ECAC is getting talent that is of the same
average caliber as the other leagues.
 
We should not over state the importance of this topic.  The NHL draft is
not a precise estimator of who will be a college all star and the vast
majority of college teams are not used to playing with a substantial number
of NHL draft picks on their roster.  The team with the most NHL draft picks
is not a shoe in for the NCAA tournament.
 
I'll throw in another speculation.  With Major Junior's college scholarship
program it is possible to try Major Junior and still decide to go to
college at a later date.
 
--Steve
 
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