I think @spooked mentioned it, but to me I always envied the STHS era stories of people being called up to the SHL in their 3rd season at 500 TPE and actually contributing. Clearly under that scale and simulation a 500-800 TPE player wasn't so far off from the 1600-2k TPE players. Also, as I understand it players were effectively maxed at 1600 TPE and getting to 2k TPE was purely to fight regression (correct me if this is wrong).

IMO the easy fix to a lot of the SHL's problems is to massively change the scale to reflect something closer to the above. Players can be "effectively" maxed at 1600 TPE (maybe getting to an attribute to 20 costs like 100 TPE or something), high earning young players can participate in the league, and mid earner types can have a real place in the league.