As a Canucks fan I'd put Pettersson above Hughes and Crosby (outproduced both and was better defensively) and would say Hughes has to be next to Dahlin. Hughes has outproduced Dahlin every year and has similar defensive analytics (depending on source) and he should be right there with him

Cole >Cat

It’s all very airtight, not that big a gap between the ranges you mentioned. Highest I could have Hughes is just under Heiskanen, and I really couldn’t bring myself to go EP over Crosby or Hughes. Not yet.

He hasn’t had a single better season get (I know he was on pace before he got hurt last year but Cat has multiple 40 goal seasons). Long term I might agree but until he really proves it no chance for today

At least for the moment, Buch is still better than Kyrou.

Yup forgot him. Bound to forget some guys on a list like this

True but last year was a massive red flag year for cat. Sure the points were there more or less, but only a single goal more than Cole while playing over 30 extra games than Caufield is kinda bad (OTT scored significantly more goals than MTL as well). Cat has a big make or break year in front of him. Caufield has just shown a way better “pure goalscoring” consistency than Cat

Homer take incoming but I think Guentzel and Jarry have to make the list for their respective positions

Think Petey is placed perfectly on this list but Hughes is easily a top 3 Left Dman right now

Guentzel for sure I forgot him, makes it over Forsberg. Jarry was in contention for one of the last few slots for me. Such little difference between that group of players, could for sure see him there though

I think the order from Hughes to the #3 spot was hard for me, I think the gap is so small. I could see him at #3 for sure.

This list isnt solely off this year and ADB has a far superior track record. Agree that this upcoming year could be where it flips for Cole if he can stay healthy but at the same time I do expect a bounceback season for Cat.

Thank you for acknowledging Dahlin, still blows my mind that many professional writers and fans won't have him in the top 10 D in many posts. I'm not sure what else he'd have to do for those people to recognize him.

It seems like there is some recency bias in many of the ranks, but perhaps you simply weigh recent performance as more valuable than track-record. For example I'd say Brandon Montour shouldn't be in the top 10 RHD after one really good season. To me he'd have to show that ability for another season before I would believe he's the 6th best RHD. Also Filip Gustafsson after one good season imo wouldn't be considered the 8th best in the league

I'd personally put Mackinnon 2nd behind McDavid and then one of Matthews or Drai next. Also Barkov could be higher depending on how much one values his defensive game, which is very good. I'd for sure put him ahead of Eichel and probably over Pettersson as well. I'll admit I really like Bratt as a player but do think regardless of my bias that he is equal to a guy like Fiala and therefore deserves being moved up the list.

Anyways, good list overall. Thanks for putting it together! The above are simply my thoughts and opinions.

consistency? you need sample size to have consistency.

Yup, so many ranges of players just have such a tiny gap between them its hard to rank and recency certainly might sway those small gaps

That's understandable. Jarry definitely had a rough 2nd half of the year dealing with injuries - so I get him just missing. And I agree there's a lot of goalies on that "next" tier after the top 7 or so where there's not a lot of separation - like you said. Personally I still think he floats around the higher end of that second tier though - like 10-12 range along with Hart/Kuemper/Demko. But again - my take can definitely be biased haha

Aho, Q. Hughes, Slavin, and Andersen are all a bit low

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins at LW... Stuart Skinner at G.

I see John Gibson made the list, lol.

Gibson is hard to get a read on, he's had ok numbers on such a bad team. There's a pretty big group of goalies that could get consideration for one of the last couple spots, Skinner was definitely one of them. Nuge is interesting - of course he had a sick season but it's such a big outlier for him and he milked that all time best PP so hard. Again could be in that bottom bucket of players in the top 15 but I'd like to see him replicate anything close to that again, even just 70+ points next season, before putting him in. Interesting case though, you definitely could.