People realize that the DEL is much closer to the Allsvenskan in quality of competition than the SHL or Liiga, right? Common thought seems to be that the Swedes, Lundell, and Stützle are facing similar levels of competition because they’re all playing pro, but it’s not so simple.

Looking at Manny’s NHLe factors the DEL is very closely comparable to the Allsvenskan and Slovakian league (where Martin Chromiak played the first half of his season).

By that measure, one DEL point = about 0.3 NHL points.

A Liiga point is worth about 0.45 NHL points, on a similar level to the NLA (Swiss league) and the AHL.

An SHL point translates to nearly 0.65 NHL points, more than twice the translated value of a DEL point.

If you adjust Tim Stützle and Lucas Raymond’s production for league quality and usage, they end up on a very similar level. Context is even more important for Europeans in professional leagues, but it often seems like people disregard it even more than with North Americans.

And then on the other side of this, there are the people who think European pro hockey is glorified beer league that they could play in and a lower level than the CHL. The ignorance baffles me.