Last week the NHL Network started their annual exercise rating the top players in the NHL by position, and gave us Connor McDavid as the best center in the world. The rest of the list created such debate that we polled the members of the PHR community and came up with our own ranking, which differed quite a bit. In fact, for the second year in a row our readers picked Sidney Crosby as the top center just barely ahead of McDavid. Nathan MacKinnon took up residence in spot three, while Auston Matthews managed to maintain his position ahead of Patrice Bergeron and the rest of the group.
Our PHR community-voted Top 20 Centers list currently looks like this:
- Sidney Crosby (838 votes)
- Connor McDavid (823 votes)
- Nathan MacKinnon (607 votes)
- Auston Matthews (509 votes)
- Patrice Bergeron (488 votes)
- John Tavares (445 votes)
- Steven Stamkos (350 votes)
- Evgeni Malkin (304 votes)
- Ryan O’Reilly (298 votes)
- Aleksander Barkov (283 votes)
- Jonathan Toews (264 votes)
- Mark Scheifele (242 votes)
- Brayden Point (209 votes)
- Jack Eichel (207 votes)
- Nicklas Backstrom (175 votes)
- Tyler Seguin (166 votes)
- Evgeny Kuznetsov (133 votes)
- Sebastian Aho (132 votes)
- Anze Kopitar (116 votes)
- Elias Pettersson (96 votes)
Now, the network has released their ranking of the best wingers in the NHL and the debate is even hotter. Nikita Kucherov took down the top spot once again following his 128-point MVP season. The Tampa Bay Lightning forward took home three individual awards after his incredible year but failed to help the team get out of the first round of the playoffs (or even win a single postseason game). Nevertheless, Kucherov is a rock solid choice at the top of the list and looks to be on a Hall of Fame path through the first six years of his career.
Behind him are a pair of players who will undoubtedly reach the Hall quickly after retirement. Patrick Kane and Alex Ovechkin continue to dominate the league in different ways, but have rarely found themselves out of the conversation of best wingers in the world. The rest of the top five is where the real debate happens however, as Atlantic Division rivals Brad Marchand and Mitch Marner round out the group. 2017-18 Hart Trophy winner Taylor Hall dropped all the way to 15th, something the NHL Network fan vote corrected in their version of the list.
Just like our poll of centers, we want the PHR community to let us know who the best wingers in the world are. Unlike the last poll however, we’ll ask you to select 20 names because of the huge number of options. Make sure to leave a comment below on who you think deserves to be recognized, or your thoughts on how the center poll 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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