for example, you could pick any one from the Olympic stadium, give them running shoes and there would be zero chance they would be anything but last over the finishing line.
For something like football (soccer) the gap is almost as large - you could take any enthusiastic amateur and put them in the premiership and the results would be obviously bad. Only as you go up the amateur skill rankins would you start to see a closing of the gap - and football / soccer has spent so long honing that gap that even professional players in the second division would usually be shown to be woefully inadequate (Leicester City being the exception proving the rule)
But NHL hockey has a huge amount of skill / equipment / training needs before even starting a game - and so the gap between amateur and top player is much smaller than we expect.
What I guess I am saying is that 99% of humanity could cross the finish line in an olympic spring (seconds off the time obviously but still finish). but probably 99% of humanity could not even stand up on the ice let alone skate and hit a puck.
As such i conjecture that professional hockey has a lot further it can stretch that gap between top professional and amateur - in other words the team that finds how to develop its skills so that a third string goalie would never stand a chance is a team that will lift a lot of trophies.