Top 10 players at each position at the end of the season

[The S5]

Ryan McDonagh. 46 points with very little PP time and he might be the best defensive D in the NHL.
But lets put Torey Krug on the list instead.

 

[JasonRoseEh]

Johnny hockey above Ovechkin? Don't know about that one chief.

 

[NoName]

Johnny hockey above Ovechkin? Don't know about that one chief.

For this year alone? Yeah I think Gaudreau deserves his spot there. 10 more points then OV and he led the Flames to the best record in the West against the prediction of all the pundits, so yeah I give him the edge. What Ovechkin did again this year leading the NHL in goals was damn impressive. That is why I still rated him as being the 5th best winger in the entire league this season.

 

[CartographerNo611]

Johnny hockey above Ovechkin? Don't know about that one chief.

Biggest Ovie homer out there and Ovie is no where near as dominate as Johnny 5 on 5. Johnny is very McDavid like and is the driving force of Calgary’s offense. Ovie is an insane complimentary player but anytime he tries to be the main guy he coughs up the puck.

 

[NoName]

Ryan McDonagh. 46 points with very little PP time and he might be the best defensive D in the NHL.
But lets put Torey Krug on the list instead.

Getting a lot of feedback on Krug. Maybe it is some bias on my point since I see Boston play pretty regularly. His ranking looks like a good candidate to change in my firsy round of feedback based revisions.

 

[ViD]

Huberdeau better than Panarin? Bob is not even top 10?

I’m outta here

 

[BlueBaron]

11th best scorer but 7th best winger? Hmm. Guess Mitch just got lucky.

 

[NoName]

11th best scorer but 7th best winger? Hmm. Guess Mitch just got lucky.

Five of those six wingers ahead of Marner outscored him in production rate (Pastrnak was on a 100 point pace) and the 6th (Ovechkin) scored 51 goals and won the Rocket again. Marner definitely had an excellent year, but so did some other wingers.

 

[GhostfaceWu]

Marchand also missed both of them for different stretches of 16+ games. Marchand creates offense on his own, I firmly believe he would have scored 100 without them, yes. He turned Riley Nash in to a PPG+ center for a stretch of around 20 games last year lol

If he's a 100 pt player without them in your eyes than why the hell didn't he put up like 125 points this year?

 

[NoName]

Huberdeau better than Panarin? Bob is not even top 10?

I’m outta here

Huberdeau vs Panarin is a reasonable debate to be had; hence why they are ranked back to back (worth remembering this is for this season's performance only, if we were judging careers then obviously this wouldn't be the ranking), I can see the argument for switching the order between the two. Bob has definitely turned up his game recently, but that doesn't nullify his struggles throughout much of the season. The truth is that (despite his top-shelf credentials) he just hasn't put up the kind of numbers this season to justify being in the top-10 when ranking solely based on 2018/2019 performance; he is close because he benefits from being a work-horse starting 62 games (which goes a ways to ameliorating a pedestrian .913 sv), but for me he is just on the outside looking in. Obviously if you were to make a "best goalies in the NHL today" that ranking would be different from this one.

 

[3074326]

All these great players, many of them playing on the same lines. It's strange how Leon Draisaitl is the only one to benefit from playing with another talented player. Very strange indeed!

HF is a dysfunctional hivemind.

 

[jfhabs]

I previously ranked the top 10 players in the NHL at the midway mark of the season in an article here: Top 10 players at each position at the mid-way mark

Now given that game 82 was played last night and the playoffs are still a few days away, it looks like the perfect time to re-rank all the players based on this season's body of work.

So it is the top 10 centres, wingers defencemen and goalies with 4 honourable mentions (and no more)

NOTE: this is going by their "listed positions" on NHL.com, not necessarily where they play the bulk of their ice-time.

Centre
1) McDavid
2) Crosby
3) MacKinnon
4) Barkov
5) Draisaitl
6) Bergeron
7) Stamkos
8) Tavares
9) Point
10) Matthews

HM: Eichel, Scheifele, Monahan, Giroux

Winger
1) Kucherov
2) P. Kane
3) Marchand
4) Gaudreau
5) Ovechkin
6) Pastrnak
7) Marner
8) Rantanen
9) Huberdeau
10) Panarin

HM: Wheeler, Landeskog, Kessel, Radulov

Defense
1) Giordano
2) Burns
3) Rielly
4) Letang
5) Josi
6) Carlson
7) Hedman
8) E. Karlsson
9) Chabot
10) Krug

HM: Suter, Doughty, Yandle, Jones

Goaltending
1) Vaslivskiy
2) Bishop
3) Lehner
4) Kuemper
5) Andersen
6) Price
7) Rinne
8) Greiss
9) Murray
10) Fleury

HM: Bobrovski, Binnnington, Dubnyk, Gibson

NOTE: Goalie seems especially subjective given the need to strike a balance when weighing being a work-horse vs raw sv% and GAA over a more limited amount of games started (and thus a fresher, more rested goalie). Kuemper went on a hot streak, but I wouldn't chose him top 10 over all the other names listed.

Good work overall


Rookies
1) Petterson
2) Dahlin
3) B. Tkachuck
4) Heiskanen

NOTE: for the top-4 rookies I just looked at teenagers. Rookies in their 20s are much more physically developed so comparing them is apples to oranges.

So what do you guys think? What are your own 2018-2019 season top-10 lists? If someone raises a convincing argument, I am totally willing to modify my lists; I admit, I don't regularly watch all 31 teams, so I might have missed something here having just relied on the paper stats for a bunch of these guys. Just remember, if you want to move someone up into the top-10, you also have to say who you would move out to make room for him.

NOTE: After feedback, I will make any changes in an edit and highlight how those changes affected the overall rankings of all guys in the top-10 (+ or - from original position).

Wheeler needs to be in the top 10. Above Rantanen, Huberdeau, Panarin & Marner for me if you ask me who's better NOW.

Price and Bob should be higher as well in that top 10 imo. Both goalies have been amazing since the all-star break, starting in a lot of game and gave their team a chance every game. Bishop had a very strong season, but not as many starts. Andersen struggled in March.

Also, if I had to chose for this season only. Jones & Yandle would be ahead of Krug & Chabot quite easily!!

 

[NoName]

That goalie list is brutal.

I fully admit that goalies is tougher to do then the other positions, since it seems way more subjective in some ways. Mind posting your list for comparison's sake? I am open to modifying any of these lists if a persuasive argument is presented.

 

[NoName]

Wheeler needs to be in the top 10. Above Rantanen, Huberdeau, Panarin & Marner for me if you ask me who's better NOW.

Price and Bob should be higher as well in that top 10 imo. Both goalies have been amazing since the all-star break, starting in a lot of game and gave their team a chance every game. Bishop had a very strong season, but not as many starts. Andersen struggled in March.

The list is around who has been the best players at each position this season, not particularly right now or in recent weeks. All periods of the regular season have been weighted equally here. This is why Price and Bobrovskiy are lower then some people anticipate given their solid recent play; it doesn't wipe out the fact that in the early part of the season they were playing poorly.

Having Wheeler and Scheifele down on the HMs hurts me (as someone who really likes the Jets) but looking at all the stats it is hard for me to say they deserve to bump one of the 10 guys ahead of them off that list when it comes to looking at this season as a whole.

 

[Emerz]

If he's a 100 pt player without them in your eyes than why the hell didn't he put up like 125 points this year?

Not really sure how that makes sense. I'm saying he'd score approximately the same amount of points regardless of who his linemates are because he's able to create offense on his own pretty much every shift. Give him Riley Nash instead of Bergeron and he still puts up the same number of points, as he's shown many times when his linemates get injured.

 

[Backcheckmonster3]

Aho's offensive production rate (30 goals, 83 points in 82 games) is significantly below Matthews (37 goals, 73 points in 68 games) and all the other centres on the top-10 list, nor does he come with the reputation of being a Selke caliber two way centre like Bergeron or Barkov. I did consider him strongly for the HM list however.

The way you describe him makes it obvious that you have hardly even watched him play.

The fact that he jumps right in as a #1 C, putting up over ppg numbers and being +25 over the season while continually playing opponents top lines and with his teams only other top6 C being out for almost half of the season. Running the PP, playing tough short handed minutes and managing to drag a team not projected by many to even be a playoffs contender to clinch a spot in the playoffs in a division where a 96 point team did not even make it!

But yeah at least he was almost amongst the honourable mentions.

 

[Mickey Marner]

I fully admit that goalies is tougher to do then the other positions, since it seems way more subjective in some ways. Mind posting your list for comparison's sake? I am open to modifying any of these lists if a persuasive argument is presented.

I don't have a list, nor do I really care what order they're in, or believe I know best. I just found, for example, Kuemper at 4 and Gibson an HM to be egregious. The other lists appear to feature some consistency in thought. The goalie list not so much.

 

[BlueBaron]

Five of those six wingers ahead of Marner outscored him in production rate (Pastrnak was on a 100 point pace) and the 6th (Ovechkin) scored 51 goals and won the Rocket again. Marner definitely had an excellent year, but so did some other wingers.

I looked at the list and no one jumped out that did not belong, it's just counter intuitive.

 

[NoName]

I don't have a list, nor do I really care what order they're in, or believe I know best. I just found, for example, Kuemper at 4 and Gibson an HM to be egregious. The other lists appear to feature some consistency in thought. The goalie list not so much.

As weird as it is to see Kuemper at 4, it is hard to argue he deserves to be much lower than that: 55 games started with a .925sv and a 2.33 GAA and 5 shutouts is pretty impressive. Gibson was way higher in my midseason list (and indeed, has much better name recognition the Kuemper and if we were going career v career, then obviously it would be no contest), but he really wore down as the season continued (being ground down on a Ducks team that cannot give him any goal support can do that) with his stats eventually becoming 57 games started with a .917sv and a 2.84 GAA and 2 shutouts. It is hard to argue that he objectively had a better season then Kuemper. Now if you switch what team each of these goalies was playing behind then we could have a very different story here (and obviously Gibson's solid track record suggests he is the superior goalie of the two), but as it stands it is hard to argue Gibson should be ahead of Kuemper on this list.

 

[Mickey Marner]

As weird as it is to see Kuemper at 4, it is hard to argue he deserves to be much lower than that: 55 games started with a .925sv and a 2.33 GAA and 5 shutouts is pretty impressive. Gibson was way higher in my midseason list (and indeed, has much better name recognition the Kuemper and if we were going career v career, then obviously it would be no contest), but he really wore down as the season continued (being ground down on a Ducks team that cannot give him any goal support can do that) with his stats eventually becoming 57 games started with a .917sv and a 2.84 GAA and 2 shutouts. It is hard to argue that he objectively had a better season then Kuemper. Now if you switch what team each of these goalies was playing behind then we could have a very different story here (and obviously Gibson's solid track record suggests he is the superior goalie of the two), but as it stands it is hard to argue Gibson should be ahead of Kuemper on this list.

NHL history is filled with Darcy Kuempers -goalies who had brief SV% spikes- that I view these type of goalies with a large amount of skepticism. For me, consistency is significantly more important when evaluating goalies and I'm willing to be wrong and assume Kuemper is a flash-in-the-pan and we just witnessed his high water mark.

 

[NoName]

NHL history is filled with Darcy Kuempers -goalies who had brief SV% spikes- that I view these type of goalies with a large amount of skepticism. For me, consistency is significantly more important when evaluating goalies and I'm willing to be wrong and assume Kuemper is a flash-in-the-pan and we just witnessed his high water mark.

That could very well be true, and if you were to offer me the choice whether I would want him or Gibson as the goalie on my team for next season I would, like you, pick Gibson without any hesitation. But for the purposes of this list which is evaluating the top 10 players at each position for this season and this season alone it is hard to deny Keumper his spot on the list.

 

[peterthegreat12]

I previously ranked the top 10 players in the NHL at the midway mark of the season in an article here: Top 10 players at each position at the mid-way mark

Now given that game 82 was played last night and the playoffs are still a few days away, it looks like the perfect time to re-rank all the players based on this season's body of work.

So it is the top 10 centres, wingers defencemen and goalies with 4 honourable mentions (and no more)

NOTE: this is going by their "listed positions" on NHL.com, not necessarily where they play the bulk of their ice-time.

Centre
1) McDavid
2) Crosby
3) MacKinnon
4) Barkov
5) Draisaitl
6) Bergeron
7) Stamkos
8) Tavares
9) Point
10) Matthews

HM: Eichel, Scheifele, Monahan, Giroux

Winger
1) Kucherov
2) P. Kane
3) Marchand
4) Gaudreau
5) Ovechkin
6) Pastrnak
7) Marner
8) Rantanen
9) Huberdeau
10) Panarin

HM: Wheeler, Landeskog, Kessel, Radulov

Defense
1) Giordano
2) Burns
3) Rielly
4) Letang
5) Josi
6) Carlson
7) Hedman
8) E. Karlsson
9) Chabot
10) Krug

HM: Suter, Doughty, Yandle, Jones

Goaltending
1) Vaslivskiy
2) Bishop
3) Lehner
4) Kuemper
5) Andersen
6) Price
7) Rinne
8) Greiss
9) Murray
10) Fleury

HM: Bobrovski, Binnnington, Dubnyk, Gibson

NOTE: Goalie seems especially subjective given the need to strike a balance when weighing being a work-horse vs raw sv% and GAA over a more limited amount of games started (and thus a fresher, more rested goalie).


Rookies
1) Petterson
2) Dahlin
3) B. Tkachuck
4) Heiskanen

NOTE: for the top-4 rookies I just looked at teenagers. Rookies in their 20s are much more physically developed so comparing them is apples to oranges.

So what do you guys think? What are your own 2018-2019 season top-10 lists? If someone raises a convincing argument, I am totally willing to modify my lists; I admit, I don't regularly watch all 31 teams, so I might have missed something here having just relied on the paper stats for a bunch of these guys. Just remember, if you want to move someone up into the top-10, you also have to say who you would move out to make room for him.

NOTE: After feedback, I will make any changes in an edit and highlight how those changes affected the overall rankings of all guys in the top-10 (+ or - from original position).

So you aren't really saying that Gaudreau and Marchand are better hockey players than Ovechkin are you? I don't understand what you are trying to convey here.

 

[PatrikBerglund]

You've got Hedman way too low, and I think id give Mcdonagh a HM, but otherwise seems reasonable

Hedman coasts through regular season, conserving energy to go demi-God in the playoffs.

 

[NoName]

So you aren't really saying that Gaudreau and Marchand are better hockey players than Ovechkin are you? I don't understand what you are trying to convey here.

Who were the top 10 players this season. I am not comparing careers or who I would rather have on my team moving forward or who I would want in a playoff series, rather ranking which players performed the best in the 2018-19 regular season. Sorry if I was vague on that point in the OP.

 

[pbgoalie]

No Gibson in top 10?

Hard to believe any goalie was more responsible for any wins for his team than Gibby.
Just based on the first half of season alone was one of the most amazing night in, night out performances I’ve seen.