As NHL training camps rapidly approach, we’ve officially reached the time of year when hockey analysts race to complete their rankings, projections and previews for the upcoming season.

One of the more highly anticipated rankings dropped on Wednesday: The Athletic’s 2026-27 release of its annual NHL player tiers. On their list, Edmonton Oilers’ captain Connor McDavid stands at the top of the mountain for the sixth year in a row. But he isn’t alone.

Unlike most player rankings, The Athletic doesn’t rank its players in a rigid numerical order, but rather, a series of tiers, including Tier 1 (MVP cornerstones), Tier 2 (franchise pillars), Tier 3 (all-stars), Tier 4 (stars), and Tier 5 (elite support). Each tier is then divided into subgroups labelled A, B, and C. It’s an attempt to create an accurate ranking without splitting hairs on every single player. After all, no two people are going to have players in the exact same order.

This year, four Oilers cracked the 150-player list. McDavid unsurprisingly ranks in 1A, alongside two other superstars — we’ll get to them in a minute — while Leon Draisaitl sits just below in 1B. Ranked in 2C is the team’s top defenceman, Evan Bouchard, and Zach Hyman earned his way into 4B.

How did The Athletic arrive at these tiers? Apparently, through an extensive process.

The ranking started with each player’s projected Net Rating as the baseline, which is described as “a modelled output that combines a player’s production with his play-driving ability while factoring for usage in order to estimate each player’s impact on their team’s goal differential.” From there, The Athletic’s team of five writers deliberated on where the model outputs might be wrong and adjusted the rankings from there. Finally, they brought in a 20-person panel of experts to go through the same process.

The result is one of the more balanced and well-researched lists in hockey media. With that, let’s dive into the four Oilers that made the cut, and where they stand league-wide heading into 2026-27.

McDavid has ranked at the very top of the NHL player tiers every year since its inception in 2021, and it’s easy to see why. Over those six seasons, he’s won two Hart Trophies, two Ted Lindsey Awards, four scoring titles, an Olympic MVP, and a Conn Smythe Trophy. His resume is simply unmatched.

With that said, two other players join him in 1A on this year’s list: Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov. Each of the two superstars has four consecutive 100-point campaigns under their belt, including MacKinnon’s MVP season in 2023-24, and Kucherov’s last year.

It’s difficult to stay on top, and there’s no doubt McDavid has had some spirited competition from some of the league’s best players over the last few years. But despite sharing the 1A tier, only one panellist had someone other than McDavid ranked number one. His status as the best in the world is still near-unanimous.

McDavid’s partner in crime, Leon Draisaitl, has enjoyed the same consistent spot in the MVP cornerstone category in each of the past six years. Last season, he broke into 1A after scoring 52 goals and ranking second in MVP voting, but fell back down to 1B this year.

An excerpt from Draisaitl’s ranking reads:

“Draisaitl’s play last season was still spectacular, but dipped slightly from that ridiculous 2024-25 peak, which explains why he’s back in his usual Tier 1B slot. He scored 17 fewer goals, and more interestingly, his underlying two-way impact took a significant hit.”

Joining Draisaitl in 1B is Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes (not bad company), with other elite talents like Macklin Celebrini, Aleksander Barkov, and David Pastrnak nipping at his heels in 1C. If he can get his defensive play back to his 2024-25 under Babcock, perhaps Draisaitl can return to the top tier next season.

At 2B, Bouchard ranks somewhere in the top 25-35 range league-wide, along with fellow offensive defencemen Lane Hutson and Adam Fox, as well as defensive stalwart Jaccob Slavin.

“He’s a hell of a player. He’s not just a product of McDavid,” said an anonymous NHL executive who took part in The Athletic’s ranking process. “I think people like to criticize the loss of value that they see, but they don’t criticize the loss of value that they don’t see because somebody doesn’t do the things he does. Does he give a little back? Sure, but he creates a ton.”

While Bouchard’s detractors certainly aren’t afraid to point out his flaws, most analysts still believe he belongs among the best defencemen in the league. At age 26, he’s already built a resume that includes three consecutive playoffs as the highest-scoring defenceman and two campaigns where he finished top five in Norris Trophy voting.

The errors Bouchard makes are too big and too frequent for him to break into the top tier, but even if he never fully cleans that area of his game up, the Oilers are lucky to have him.

Rounding out the group of Oilers in the top 150 is netfront specialist Zach Hyman.

He may not be the flashiest player in the world, but his tenacity and ability to get to the right positions at the right time have led to magnificent results since coming to Edmonton.

Last season, he scored at a 44-goal pace despite missing the first month and change while recovering from a broken wrist. Hyman has remained incredibly effective into his 30s, and the Oilers will need that to continue if they’re going to win a Stanley Cup next spring.

Other players ranked 4B include Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, two names that bring a collective cringe to Oiler fans’ faces. The team may have fumbled away a couple of stars, but they certainly didn’t fumble when they signed Hyman as a free agent five years ago.

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