Yeah, I´m open to this being subtly retconned tbh. But only because something specifically happened showing he might not be able to freeze that fast, though...could it also be PIS? Feels like even with his MF and beyond feats, he should have been able to catch that, so its either Luffys plot armor or Kuzan pulled a fattora.
Nah, there´s ultimately no reason to think Minato´s role was ever retconned. He died nobly and famously, but it was before his prime. He was never above prime hiruzen, just maybe old Hiruzen.
The Asura Indra plot has been changed and added overtime, which gave Hashirama much more importance because he had to stop Madara, but there´s pretty much zero story reason for Kishi to change the roles of the other Hokage, who basically are no more or less relevant than eachother at the end of the day
And I seriously doubt Kisame was ever supposed to be Zabuza level lol. Zabuza was also weaker than Kakashi, even by pre ts, Kakashi was portrayed under the Akatsuki, or at best equal.