Poll: Who Are The Best Wingers In The NHL?

Over the last few weeks the NHL Network have released their lists of the Top 20 Centers and Top 20 Defensemen in the league, sparking huge debate across the hockey world. In a response to this we polled the readers in the PHR community and came up with our own lists, which varied greatly from the original. For our centers, Sidney Crosby came out just ahead of Connor McDavid for the best in the NHL, while John Tavares and Patrice Bergeron were given much more respect.

On the blue line, NHL Network had Victor Hedman as the best defenseman following his Norris Trophy season while several other respected names found themselves off the list entirely. After nearly 10,000 votes, PHR chose Erik Karlsson as the top dog despite his disappointing 2017-18 campaign. Karlsson just barely edged out Drew Doughty and Hedman at the top of our list, while there were some other interesting inclusions further down. Our PHR community-voted Top 20 Defenseman list currently looks like this:

1. Erik Karlsson (867 votes)
2. Drew Doughty (862 votes)
3. Victor Hedman (857 votes)
4. P.K. Subban (694 votes)
5. Brent Burns (633 votes)
6. Roman Josi (429 votes)
7. Seth Jones (387 votes)
8. Oliver Ekman-Larsson (378 votes)
9. Alex Pietrangelo (373 votes)
10. John Carlson (341 votes)
11. Dustin Byfuglien (326 votes)
12. Shea Weber (219 votes)
13. Aaron Ekblad (215 votes)
14. John Klingberg (203 votes)
15. Ryan Suter (194 votes)
16. Kris Letang (166 votes)
17. Dougie Hamilton (165 votes)
18. Duncan Keith (163 votes)
19. Ryan Ellis (139 votes)
20. Charlie McAvoy/Ivan Provorov (137 votes)

Today, the NHL Network released their next ranking, this time valuing the Top 20 Wingers in the league. Nikita Kucherov took down the top spot after once again proving he is an elite offensive talent for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Registering a career-high 100 points last season, Kucherov led the Lightning in scoring for the third consecutive season despite only just turning 25 and was rewarded with a huge eight-year $76MM contract extension this summer. He’ll be in Tampa Bay for quite a while putting up huge point totals and driving an offense that is among the best in the NHL.

Behind Kucherov was the ageless Alex Ovechkin who recently took home his seventh Rocket Richard trophy as the league’s best goal scorer, and finally won the Stanley Cup after being ousted annually by nemesis Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ovechkin also broke the 600-goal threshold in 2017-18, and will likely end up among the very best goal scorers to ever play the game. Reigning Hart Trophy winner as the league MVP falls in just behind the top two, as Taylor Hall managed to hold off Patrick Kane and Brad Marchand for third in the ranking. The rest of the group is a mishmash of veteran stars like Blake Wheeler and Phil Kessel, and young talents like Brock Boeser and Mikko Rantanen.

Just like the debate over centers and defensemen, we will now as you at PHR to rank the top wingers in the NHL. The NHL Network did their own fan vote which ended up being somewhat hijacked by Jake Virtanen fans, but also included other names like Mitch Marner and Tom Wilson. Where do you think those players fall in? Since there are an incredible amount of talented wingers in the league, this time we’ll ask you to cast your vote by selecting 20 names. Make sure to leave a comment below on who you think deserves to be recognized, or your thoughts on how the center and defense polls ended. We’ve included many names that could be considered, but if you think we’ve missed someone important (which we undoubtedly have) make sure to leave his name down below.

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