If an average men's league team was given a 6 goal lead with 4:30 left against an NHL team, would they be able to hold on and win?

I say absolutely no chance.

Follow up question: how much time would you need to shave off to where you think a men's league team with a 6 goal lead could actually hold off an NHL team?

Yes it 100% is doable.. look at the David Ayers situation

I don't have a great gage for how good the average men's league team is, but I'm with you. Decent adult athletes generally have a hard time understand how much better pros are than them. The Dave Ayres thing was different because he had an elite NHL defense in front of him. If the whole team is amateurs, I bet the NHLers are averaging one goal every 20-30 seconds.

If they all pile in front of the net and try to block every shot then they may have a chance lol

That's the strategy my friends had who thought the men's league could win. The NHLers would just pick us off one by one. No average person is taking a 90+ mph rubber puck twice

Ayers also played Junior A (was **** but still.) Miles ahead of some beer league goalie

Why bring Ayers into the discussion, he had a NHL team in front of him.
The 5 NHLers skaters would dominate the 5 Beer leaguer skaters, and get excellent scoring opportunities every 20 seconds. No reason the NHLers wouldn't score two goals a minute.

depends what the incentive is to win I guess, also depends on how drunk they are

Are they playing this years detroit team? I feel like they could spot this years detroit team 6 and hang on to win. Even buffalo. i could see it.

Concidering it takes 10-20s to get into offensive zone after scoring and if the beer league guys even have a half decent goalie I think they might hold on. Ffs how many times would they get a change to play nhl players? Thinking they would eat a few pucks and basically even lay on top of pucks to play out the clock.

Eichel could do it alone with Ollofson... But ye, remember it's 6 forwards/ dmen for 4.30.