JT Miller too low? Nico Hischier too high? How readers felt about each player’s spot in the Player Tiers

By Dom Luszczyszyn, Sean Gentille and Shayna Goldman

Last week we unveiled our annual NHL Player Tiers project, the top 150 players separated into five distinct tiers. Naturally, that led to a lot of chatter regarding each player’s placement. Just as we said in the original writeup: “The debate and discussion that stems from it is the point.”

Now it’s time to dive deeper into that point.

This year we introduced a survey asking readers to tell us exactly how they felt about each player’s standing. The good news? Not a single player received majority support for being ranked “too high” or “too low.” Making a fair list is hard work, but we feel good about the result. On top of that, readers had 25 disagreements on average, or 17 percent of the list — a fairly good ratio between “this is junk, everything is wrong” and “this is stupid, everything is obvious.” That’s not an easy balance to strike.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t vocal minorities though. No two lists will ever be the same, especially one that’s 150 players deep, and every single player received at least one vote in either direction. And several got more than enough support (or disdain) to be discussed further.

We stand by our list, but with those players in mind, it’s worth expanding on why they were placed where they were. It’s also worthwhile to have this kind of list to look back on in one year — were we right to stand our ground, or was the wisdom of the crowd on the money?

Time will tell. For now, here are the players that fans felt the Player Tiers overrated or underrated, plus a third category on players who sparked the most discussion in both directions.

Underrated

Players who were at least 20 percentage points “too low” compared to “too high”

JT Miller — 3C
Plus 28 percent favorability

No player’s position received more pushback than Miller’s — both now from fans, and at the start from insiders.

Miller started the exercise in 3A next to Nico Hischier, a player many fans felt was too high. We’ll get to him. That placement was almost unanimously picked apart immediately by those in the know. The consensus: Miller was too high.

Yes, Miller scores a lot of points and yes, he did well in tough minutes last year. But that was also a ceiling year for a 31-year-old inflated heavily by his on-ice percentages. Players who outscore expectations by 15 percentage points aren’t likely to repeat the feat. This exercise, after all, is about what to expect in 2024-25, not about what they did in 2023-24.

Those we spoke to weren’t as high on the substance underneath his production. Scoring makes the hockey world go around and carries a lot of weight, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all. In this case, many didn’t feel the rest of Miller’s game compared favorably to those above him.

If Miller does repeat last year’s magic, he’ll land higher next season. That’s not a bet we, or anyone we spoke to, was willing to make.

Sergei Bobrovsky — 5A
Plus 24 percent favorability

We’ve been doing these long enough to recognize potential pressure points even before we publish, and Bobrovsky fell into that category. Designating a Stanley Cup-winning goaltender as a “support player” felt like it was guaranteed to rankle some folks. And rankle it did.

There are two main points to reinforce here. First, there’s no shame in being a good support player. The rest of the names in Tier 5 are a testament to that. The other: Bobrovsky’s regular-season performance is an obstacle. In the last five seasons, among goalies with at least 75 games started (an average of 15 per season), he’s tied for 27th in save percentage (.907) with Alexandar Georgiev, Scott Wedgewood and Mikko Koskinen.

Does his playoff reputation bump him up the list? Certainly. But we’d gently suggest his play last spring (.899 against Edmonton) wasn’t enough to put him in the elite class.

Honorable mentions: Wyatt Johnston, Sidney Crosby, Brock Boeser, Mikko Rantanen, Steven Stamkos, Nikolaj Ehlers, Brad Marchand, Jake Oettinger

Overrated

Players who were at least 20 percentage points “too high” compared to “too low”

Nico Hischier — 2C
Minus-31 percent favorability

All things considered, Hischier’s placement as the lone center in Tier 2C was relatively easy. He’s a better, significantly more well-rounded player than Connor Bedard at this point in his career — enough so to deserve some real distance from Bedard and the rest of Tier 3. Putting a Selke candidate in a group with (for now) one of the worst defensive forwards in the league was a non-starter.

He’s also not on a level with Sebastian Aho, Jack Eichel, Elias Pettersson and Brayden Point, the centers directly ahead of him on Tiers 2A and 2B, largely due to his lack of a track record as a point-per-game producer. We docked him for falling from that level last season, but he is — in our view and the view of our panel — too substantive a player to drop any further.

Evan Bouchard — 2C
Minus-31 percent favorability

Bouchard took one of the biggest leaps of any player this season and some fans felt it went too far (good thing we at least moved him down from 2B). That’s fair given some of the criticisms surrounding him as a coattail-rider who struggles defensively, but the overarching opinion from most is that those criticisms have become mostly unfounded.

Bouchard elevated his game significantly last season as a driver on his own merit and greatly cleaned up the defensive gaffes that haunted his game in years past. He grew into a more complete player as the season went along and that was on center stage during the playoffs.

For most players, we have a “wait and see” approach — do it again, essentially. We understand if fans want to do the same with Bouchard, but we’re making a bet that he’s already there.

Jesper Bratt — 3B
Minus-23 percent favorability

Bratt’s placement initially got some pushback from our insider panel because he isn’t the guy in New Jersey and hasn’t proven his style can click in a playoff environment. But we opted against a drastic change because he embodies what Tier 3 is all about.

Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier lead the charge in New Jersey, but Bratt is still an important part of the Devils’ success — he was arguably their best player last season. He is an elite puck transporter who tends to make an outsized impact at five-on-five. Despite some up-and-down years in New Jersey, he remains pretty consistent on the scoresheet. But most important for our purposes, Bratt is the high-end supporting talent every contender should strive to have around their stars to help them be at their best — just like fellow 3B’ers Zach Hyman and Roope Hintz are to their respective teams.

Sebastian Aho — 2B
Minus-23 percent favorability

Maybe it’s Hurricanes fatigue, maybe it’s who he’s next to, but the people don’t seem to like Sebastian Aho! Not as much as we do, anyway.

While Aho wasn’t the top vote-getter for “too high” he was the second-lowest for “too low.” That would’ve made a lot more sense last season when he landed in 2B after managing only 67 points, but we held steady projecting a bounce-back. That’s exactly what happened with his 89-point season — an impressive feat in Carolina’s system where Aho doesn’t sacrifice any defense.

Aho remains one of the league’s most consistently elite centers at both ends of the ice and is a big reason the Hurricanes are an annual contender. The brigade against him was a bit unexpected and also feels slightly unwarranted. Aho is very good.

Jack Hughes — 1C
Minus-21 percent favorability

With Hughes, the question was whether we should drop him out of Tier 1C after a disappointing 2023-24. We decided to hold our stock (similar to many other Devils), given how productive he still managed to be despite playing through a shoulder injury and a generally sloppy season in New Jersey.

Ultimately, he’s still one of the very best offensive players in the league, and he still has yet to play an NHL game as a 23-year-old. This list has a lot of projections baked in and that includes Hughes jumping a level towards 110 points.

Are we putting too much stock in his talent, age and ability to maintain a relatively high level of excellence in crummy circumstances? Perhaps. But that’s a tough combo to argue against.

Adam Fox — 1C
Minus-21 percent favorability

Analyzing defensemen is no easy feat, which is why many instinctively look towards more tangible things like points and highlight-reel scoring plays. That helps build the hype around players like Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes who are more noticeably dominant. More showy shutdown styles like Charlie McAvoy’s also garner more attention.

Fox instead plays a quieter style at both ends of the ice, relying on anticipation and smart positioning to make up for what he lacks in size and foot speed. And it leads to excellent results at both ends of the ice.

Despite his stylistic differences, there was never a question of whether he stacked up to the league’s best from us or the panel of insider voices. It was just a matter of deciding the margin between him and Makar, and where Hughes fit within that.

Honorable mentions: Mitch Marner, Jack Eichel, Seth Jones, Brent Burns

Most debated

Previously unmentioned players who received an opinion on over 30 percent of responses, with at least 10 percent on either side.

Connor Bedard — 3A
13 percent too low, 29 percent too high

Bedard’s value invites a lot of debate about how special he projects to be coupled with how unpolished he looked in his first season. The NHL is a hard league and we tried to find a balance between where he’s going (franchise status) and where he’s been (a first-year star).

That ended up being decisive in both directions, although the majority of those who had an opinion were more likely to say “not yet.” We’ll see where he lands in his sophomore season with more support around him, but we tried to play it safely — in both directions.

Quinn Hughes — 1C
19 percent too low, 13 percent too high

What’s a Player Tiers project without some Quinn Hughes debate?

There was no doubt Hughes had made the jump to MVP territory after his breakthrough 2023-24 season. The big question was where exactly he fit within that — closer to Makar in 1B or Fox in 1C?

Hughes started the process in 1B, but ultimately after getting feedback from several insiders, 1C was the final decision. That’s for two key reasons: his track record and playoff performance. Those are likely the two driving thoughts for “too high” voters. Hughes has to show that last year’s elite level is the bar to at least reach from this point on.

“Too low” voters probably feel Hughes deserves better than Makar based on 2023-24 alone. And while they’d be right, players’ placements are based on their entire body of work and not just one season.

Honorable mentions: Gustav Forsling, Thatcher Demko, Kirill Kaprizov, Brady Tkachuk, Victor Hedman, William Nylander, Tim Stützle, Matt Boldy

Honorable commissions

Players readers felt should’ve made the cut

In all, 74 different names were suggested to be replacements, although only 11 received support above one percent — and none above five percent. That makes us feel confident about the players we did select, although one survey respondent listed 33 (!) names, and at that point, we’re just curious about which 33 names they’d take off.

Regardless, at that part of the exercise, it comes down to personal preference. Maybe there are 33 players they’d rather have. For others, it was one or two players where we had the same internal and external debates. Would you rather have Conor Garland or Claude Giroux instead of Jamie Benn or Patrick Kane? Even if the latter two were the ones that made the cut, the former two would’ve fit in just fine.

With that being said, here are the “next” 11 players in order of support: Conor Garland, Claude Giroux, Casey Mittelstadt, Drake Batherson, JJ Peterka, Luke Hughes, Matias Maccelli, Esa Lindell, Gabriel Vilardi, Martin Necas and Ukko- Pekka Luukkonen.

Voting Breakdown

(Top photo of JT Miller: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)