The top 5 NHL centers of 2025
With the final days of 2025 ahead, what better way to celebrate the calendar year than by highlighting some of the best performances we’ve witnessed in the past 365 days?
Over these last few days of the year, I’ll look at the best players at all five positions (goaltender, defense, right wing, left wing, and center) from 2025, which includes the January to April months of the 2024-25 season, the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the October to December months in the 2025-26 season, as well as some consideration from the 4 Nations Face-Off.
To finish off the series, we’ll look at the centers. The position is always the best of the best, as players who rank second or third on this list would probably be the top players at other positions. It’s one of the most important positions in the game, so it makes sense that the best players end up here.
First, a few honorable mentions:
Aleksander Barkov, Florida Panthers – Much like Matthew Tkachuk in my right wingers list, the issue with Barkov is not that his play wasn’t good enough to crack the top five, it’s that he didn’t play enough. He finished the 2024-25 season with 37 points in 39 games, won his third Selke Trophy, and had another 22 points in 23 games in the playoffs en route to the Panthers’ second-consecutive Stanley Cup, a performance which was top-five worthy on its own. But an ACL and MCL tear during training camp has meant he will miss most, if not all, of the 2025-26 season, which is enough to hold him back at a position which has plenty of competition.
Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins – Even at 38 years old, you can’t have a best centers list without mentioning Crosby in some capacity. He’s the model for consistency, as he established a league record 20-straight point-per-game seasons in 2025. He was also above a point per game on the year with 90 points in 79 games and continued to prove why he is a face of Canadian hockey with a strong showing at the 4 Nations Face-Off. And as far as history goes, surpassing Mario Lemieux as the Penguins’ all-time leading scorer is pretty cool too. Even as Crosby missed out on the playoffs for a third straight season, he’s still putting up great numbers for his age.
Mark Scheifele, Winnipeg Jets – Scheifele is the best example of how stacked the center position is compared to the wingers. His teammate Kyle Connor had an excellent year with 37 goals and 91 points in 80 games and was named the top left winger of 2025. Scheifele had an almost-identical year with 35 goals and 88 points in 80 games, and he can’t even crack the top five. His playoff performance was not as strong as Connor’s, which impacts Scheifele’s placement as well, but with so many talented centers in this league, some great ones are left by the wayside.
5. Macklin Celebrini, San Jose Sharks
Regular Season: 81 GP, 34 G, 62 A, 96 P
Playoffs: N/A
Did anyone expect Celebrini to be this good this fast? While the 2024 first-overall pick came with plenty of pedigree, his first season-and-a-half in the NHL has exceeded most expectations. I guess when your dad has worked with the Vancouver Canucks and Golden State Warriors director of sports medicine and performance, an easy transition to the NHL game should have been expected, but 2025 saw Celebrini take a step from exciting NHL rookie to one of the game’s elite talents.
His end to the 2024-25 season was pretty good, finishing with 36 points in 42 games to wrap up a great rookie campaign, and he wound up third in Calder Trophy voting. But to start the 2025-26 season, he’s put together 60 points in 39 games, which is third in NHL scoring and ahead of some big names like Leon Draisaitl, Mikko Rantanen and Nikita Kucherov. Even if Celebrini hadn’t scored a single goal this season, he’d still be at a point-per-game pace with his 39 assists, tied for the second most in the league. It’s a performance that’s reportedly earned him a spot on Canada’s Olympic team (not officially confirmed as of press time), making him the youngest player to ever wear the red and white at the Olympics. The sky’s the limit for Celebrini and the Sharks.
4. Jack Eichel, Vegas Golden Knights
Regular Season: 71 GP, 30 G, 57 A, 87 P
Playoffs: 11 GP, 1 G, 9 A, 10 P
For a decent portion of Eichel’s career, it looked like he might never live up to the potential he had when he was challenging Connor McDavid for the first-overall pick in 2015. He was still a high-end talent, but it always felt like there was a missing part of his game, or a step which he still needed to take, especially during his time with the Buffalo Sabres. But ever since Eichel won a Stanley Cup with Vegas, his game has improved and he’s getting closer to the player many expected he’d be when he was drafted.
Eichel dealt with a couple injuries in 2025, but none significant enough to hurt his standing on the list, and he was productive when he played with a 1.23 points per game which ranked sixth in the league. He’s still not at the level of the big three at center (you already know who they are) in terms of production, but Eichel was still a step above the rest of the pack in his own little bubble. He has yet to hit the 100-point mark in a season, but he was only six points short in 2024-25 and could hit that total this season if he stays healthy. He had a weaker showing in the playoffs with just one goal and nine points in 10 games, but it wasn’t bad enough to ruin what was an otherwise great year for Eichel.
3. Leon Draisaitl, Edmonton Oilers
Regular Season: 74 GP, 45 G, 61 A, 106 P
Playoffs: 22 GP, 11 G, 22 A, 33 P
As I alluded to with Eichel, most probably guessed whom the top three on this list are, so it was only a matter of what order they came in. If there was one player in this tier whose rank you could guess, it’s Draisaitl at third, as he’s a slight step behind (spoiler alert) Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid. But even this year was up in the air, as Draisaitl was the only of the three with award recognition as a Rocket Richard Trophy winner and a Hart Trophy finalist, as well as finishing sixth in votes for the Selke. Still, as elite as Draisaitl’s production is and how much his defensive game has improved, he’s behind his two peers.
There was a time where I would have considered Draisaitl on the fringes of a list of the five best players in the league. MacKinnon, McDavid and Cale Makar have an obvious edge, and Auston Matthews was a freak of nature in his own right with his goal-scoring talent and elite defensive play, especially with Draisaitl struggling to drive play and defend away from McDavid. But that version of Draisaitl is long gone, and with Matthews’ game taking significant steps back as well, Draisaitl is the fourth-best player in the league at worst. Case in point: a season when he had 45 goals and 106 points is a “down year,” and he was still excellent in the playoffs with 33 points in 22 games. He’s now 30 years old, so there are only so many years of “this” version of Draisaitl left. Enjoy it while you can.
2. Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
Regular Season: 79 GP, 50 G, 71 A, 121 P
Playoffs: 7 GP, 7 G, 4 A, 11 P
Recency bias might make this selection a surprise to some. After all, the Avalanche are running away with the Presidents’ Trophy through the first half of the season, and MacKinnon is the driving force of their success. For the longest time, he was leading the scoring race, and he’s still leading the goal-scoring race with 32, seven more than Matt Boldy and Morgan Geekie tied in second. If you look at total points in 2025, his 121 were the most by five. He’s an early Hart-Trophy favorite, and he’s deserving of it. But when the margins are so close, any weakness can swing the argument one way or the other, and there’s a glaring one in MacKinnon’s game.
The weakness is MacKinnon’s defensive play. It was never a strong suit of his, as his style has leaned towards an all-out energy attack which overwhelms his opponent but in turn requires a bigger commitment to an offensive game. When you’re spending 60-70% of your ice time with Makar and Devon Toews, you can also get away with a weaker defensive game. But it is still a wart on a player who is looked at as one of the best in the league and is something his opponents can exploit. I’d point to the lack of recent playoff success as a reason where that may be the problem rearing its’ ugly head, but MacKinnon also has the only Stanley Cup of the top three, so there goes that theory. Even then, this issue is miniscule, as MacKinnon makes up for it with his offense tenfold and still is the clear-cut second-best player in the league.
1. Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers
Regular Season: 73 GP, 35 G, 80 A, 115 P
Playoffs: 22 GP, 7 G, 26 A, 33 P
Do I even need to explain this selection? This is my fourth year putting together these year-end positional rankings, and each time McDavid was the clear-cut favorite at center, even if he’s only won the Hart Trophy as the league’s best player once in that timespan. He might be at the “Steve Yzerman” stage of his career where he’s focusing more on preserving himself for a Stanley Cup run instead of putting up video game point totals in the regular season, but even McDavid in “human mode” is a class above the rest. You don’t need to look at the numbers to see why he’s the best; just watching a shift or two of his game showcases why, and I say this as a stats guy.
If there was any blemish on his season, it was his production lagging behind other players more than usual during January to April, even though most players could only dream of 46 points in 33 games. He had an even slower start to the 2025-26 season (still 14 points in 12 games, mind you), but since then, he’s seen a return to video-game-mode McDavid with 21 goals and 55 points in just 28 games, turning what was an eight-point deficit in the scoring race to MacKinnon on Nov. 11 to a three-point lead. And while McDavid’s playoff performance in 2025 wasn’t as historic as 2024’s, he still exceeded MacKinnon. Perhaps Celebrini’s play this season is a sign of someone approaching McDavid’s title as best player in the league, but for now, he remains unchallenged, even if MacKinnon is close at times.
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