Poll: Who Are The Best Defensemen In The NHL?

Earlier this month the NHL Network started their annual exercise rating the top players in the NHL by position, and gave us Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov as the best players in the world at their respective spots. The rest of the lists created such debate that we polled the members of the PHR community and came up with our own rankings, which differed quite a bit. In fact, for the second year in a row our readers picked Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin at the top of each list.

We asked readers to select the best 20 wingers in the NHL. Our PHR community-voted Top 20 Wingers list currently looks like this:

1. Alex Ovechkin (691 votes)
2. Patrick Kane (644 votes)
3. Nikita Kucherov (618 votes)
4. Artemi Panarin (543 votes)
5. Mitch Marner (517 votes)
6. Taylor Hall (482 votes)
7. Vladimir Tarasenko (459 votes)
8. Brad Marchand (451 votes)
9. Johnny Gaudreau (442 votes)
10. Leon Draisaitl (412 votes)
11. David Pastrnak (407 votes)
12. Mikko Rantanen (384 votes)
13. Mark Stone (340 votes)
14. Claude Giroux (327 votes)
15. Jamie Benn (306 votes)
16. Patrik Laine (294 votes)
17. Blake Wheeler (289 votes)
18. Gabriel Landeskog (274 votes)
19. Matthew Tkachuk (254 votes)
20. Phil Kessel (228 votes)

Now, the network has released their ranking of the best defensemen in the NHL and the debate has heated up once again. Brent Burns jumped up to the top of the list after an outstanding 83-point season, while Mark Giordano’s Norris Trophy vaulted him to third despite not appearing anywhere on the list a year ago. Burns set a new high in points for his career despite turning 34 in March, while Giordano had nearly 20 more points than his next closest season. The undrafted Calgary Flames defenseman will turn 36 in October but was unstoppable at both ends of the rink.

The rest of the list is populated by both veterans and youngsters, with names like Ryan Suter coming in right next to Miro Heiskanen. While young players are taking over the forward position there is still plenty of older talent locking it down on the back end. One player with a huge jump is somewhere in between; Morgan Reilly finds himself seventh on the board after breaking out in his sixth NHL season. The Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman is still just 25 but is now one of the longest-tenured players on the roster with 470 games under his belt.

Just like our forward polls, we want the PHR community to let us know who the best defensemen in the world are. Unlike the last poll however, we’ll ask you to select just 10 names.  Make sure to leave a comment below on who you think deserves to be recognized, or your thoughts on how the other two polls 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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