I don't think it is off topic at all @Save the itchy algae!. Good questions and a fair point. I think it definitely is, as raindancewx states and you suggest, "relative" given the major recent losses in sea ice up there. I had actually not looked at it and just from hearing what people had been saying, assumed the ++++AO and +++EPO had to rebuild quite a bit. However, sho nuff, you're right.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Since it was in banter and raindancewx didn't cite sources, it could be that this article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-017-3618-9#Sec15 was the one he was using for the claim (conclusions from that study):
The spatial pattern of those CI persistent anomalies that lead the NAO by 1 year is quasi-annular about the Arctic-high latitudes coast, extending over the West Baffin Bay-Davis Strait-Labrador coast and the North-East Okhotsk sea (with positive anomalies leading the NAO positive phase). The maximal phase of this co-variability is triggered when a high pressure anomaly develops 1 year before the NAO+ (low pressure for NAO-) over the Central Arctic extending over North Greenland-Canadian Archipelago-Baffin Bay with centres also over the Laptev Sea and North Barents Sea. This “Arctic bridge” appears as a pre-conditioning feature of the maximal NAO phase, being systematic under transient climates. Its role is linked to cold advection over both: the North-Western Atlantic and North-Western Pacific with evaporative ocean cooling, low pressure formation and persistent latent heat advection over the mid-latitudes land. So a persistent, annular, negative meridional thermal gradient is achieved about the Arctic coast, leading positive vorticity over Central Arctic the following year (when leading NAO+). A mode of CI variability captures this pattern and is leading the NAO index by 1 year, having similar spectral properties to the NAO index. The highest leading correlation of this mode is obtained over ([35°N–90°N]), domain that couples the Arctic with the high-latitudes.
Another thing to consider is that the NAO is measured at sea level, not higher up where we usually want it for blocking and I'm guessing most researchers, even if they like snow like us, have to go by how the measurement is taken to get their results published.
While he may be on shakier ground concerning the sea ice, there has also been talk of the lag after the solar minimum producing an NAO, so I thought I'd look at that too.
Probably the most famous once of these is 2009 - 10:
and here is the solar plot:
That hypothesis also checks out in 1998 or so:
It gets less evident in the late 80s though:
As you go further back there is a correlation again, but that was also with an favorable AMO, so that could have had a say too.