Center is the deepest position in hockey, and it isn’t particularly close. The league’s best offensive players have always tended to line up in the middle, which is why cutting this list off at ten means leaving off players who’d headline the depth chart at any other position.
The top four sorted themselves out on the ice last season — two of them cleared 127 points, and a 20-year-old forced his way in alongside them. After that it comes down to what you value: a full season of excellence, or a shorter one at a higher level. Here, The Hockey Beast lists the ten best centers in the NHL heading into 2026-27.
10 best centers in the NHL
10: Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins
Crosby put up 74 points in 68 games in his 21st NHL season, which extended the most quietly absurd streak in hockey: 21 straight seasons at a point per game or better. He also dragged Pittsburgh back to the playoffs for the first time in four years and led the team in scoring when they got there. Seventh all-time in points, and still going.
9: Mark Scheifele, Winnipeg Jets
Scheifele broke 100 points for the first time in his career at age 32, finishing with 103 and a career-best 67 assists. He also passed everyone in Jets and Atlanta Thrashers history in both points and games played. Somehow this all happened without much of anyone outside Manitoba noticing.
8: Aleksander Barkov, Florida Panthers
This is the toughest ranking on the list, because Barkov missed the entire 2025-26 season with injury. Before that, he won the Selke in each of his last two healthy seasons and captained Florida to a second straight Stanley Cup. A fully healthy Barkov is a top-five center. We just haven’t seen one in over a year.
READ MORE: Ranked: Here are the NHL’s 20 best defensemen for 2026-27
7: Auston Matthews, Toronto Maple Leafs
Matthews had the worst season of his career last year — 27 goals and 53 points in an injury-shortened campaign — and he still became Toronto’s all-time leading goal scorer along the way. Nobody in the NHL has scored more goals than him since he entered the league. A bounce-back year moves him up this list in a hurry.
6: Nick Suzuki, Montreal Canadiens
Suzuki hit 101 points, won the Selke as the league’s best defensive forward, finished plus-37 and led Montreal to the Eastern Conference Final. He also hasn’t missed a single game in seven NHL seasons. The fifth straight year he’s improved his point total, and the one where he stopped being underrated.
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5: Jack Eichel, Vegas Golden Knights
Eichel led Vegas with 90 points and then put up 22 in 22 playoff games on the way to the Stanley Cup Final — 20 of them assists. He’s become one of the better two-way centers in hockey without losing anything offensively, and he’s now played at least 74 games in back-to-back seasons after injuries defined his early career.
4: Leon Draisaitl, Edmonton Oilers
Injury held Draisaitl to 65 games, and he still finished with 97 points at a 1.49-per-game clip that ranked fourth in the NHL. He leads the league in power-play goals since 2015-16 and has scored more playoff goals than anyone over the last four postseasons. Health is the only thing standing between him and the top two.
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3: Macklin Celebrini, San Jose Sharks
Celebrini nearly doubled his rookie point total, finished fourth in the NHL with 115 points, and dragged San Jose from 52 points to 86 in a single season. Then he added an Olympic silver, a World Championship captaincy and IIHF Player of the Year. He’s 20. If there’s a player outside Edmonton and Colorado who wins an Art Ross this season, it’s him.
2: Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
MacKinnon scored 53 goals, put up 127 points and finished at plus-57, the best mark in the league. He’s now hit 111 points or more in four straight seasons and has been a top-five Hart finalist in six of the last seven. In the playoffs he averages 1.30 points per game, fifth-best in NHL history behind Gretzky, Lemieux, McDavid and Draisaitl.
Who is the best center in the NHL?
1: Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers
McDavid led the NHL with 138 points and won his fifth Ted Lindsay Award, something only Wayne Gretzky has managed. He put together a 20-game point streak worth 46 points in the middle of the season, then went to the Olympics and won tournament MVP. Over the last decade, he’s the only player in hockey to crack 1,000 points. The gap is still the gap.
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