Centres of Attention: McDavid, MacKinnon and Matthews top TSN's Top 50 NHL Player list

There’s a new Great 8 in the National Hockey League.

Connor McDavid is the NHL’s No. 1 player for an eighth consecutive season in TSN’s annual pre-season poll.

Voters were asked to project the Top 50 players in the league for the 2024-25 season. McDavid was the No. 1 choice on 20 of 20 ballots in TSN tabulations.

As it happens, there is room for only one Great 8 on the list. Alex Ovechkin, the original, fell out of the Top 50 for the first time since voting began in 2010.

That just may be added motivation for Ovechkin in his quest to surpass Wayne Gretzky as the NHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer. With 853 career goals, Ovechkin enters this season 41 shy of Gretzky’s mark of 894 goals.

Meanwhile, any doubts about McDavid that arose during a goal-challenged 2023-24 regular season were eroded by 100 assists and erased by a record-setting 34 more in the playoffs – earning him the Conn Smythe Trophy.

McDavid scored 32 goals during the regular season, half as many as a career-high 64 in 2022-23.

As McDavid reaches what is likely the mid-range of his career – he is on the threshold of his 10th NHL season – the numbers are piling up.

First up for McDavid in 2024-25 is reaching 1,000 career regular-season points. He enters the season with 982 in 645 games.

If he can tally 18 in fewer than 11 games, McDavid will surpass Mike Bossy (656) and reach the millennium mark in the third fewest games behind Wayne Gretzky (424) and Mario Lemieux (513).

Just as McDavid is the definitive choice for No. 1 this season, Colorado captain Nathan MacKinnon is the virtually uncontested pick for No. 2. He was listed second on 19 of 20 ballots.

That gives Canada the ultimate one-two strength down the middle in February’s 4 Nations Face-Off.

MacKinnon won the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP and the Ted Lindsay Award as the players’ choice for most outstanding player last season. He recorded career highs in goals (51), assists (89) and points (140), in finishing second to Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov in the Art Ross race.

MacKinnon has had seven point-per-game seasons after what, in hindsight, was a curious start to his career. The Av averaged 0.69 points per game the first 300 games and has doubled that, 1.41, over the past nearly 500 games (491).

No. 3 on the list is Auston Matthews, who with 69 goals last season came within a whisker of becoming the NHL’s first 70-goal scorer since 1992-93. Matthews is more than a one-trick pony. His plus-122 over the past five seasons is best among NHL forwards, ever so slightly ahead of MacKinnon’s plus-121.

No. 4 Leon Draisaitl scored at a 100-point pace for the sixth straight season in 2023-24 but the Edmonton Oiler’s most impactful work came in the off-season when he reset the salary bar – signing for a record-high $14 million AAV, starting in 2025-26.

Rounding out the top five is Kucherov, who won the 2023-24 scoring title on 44 goals and 100 assists, joining McDavid as the first triple-digit playmakers in 33 years. Kucherov’s second career Art Ross was aided and abetted by an all-time single-season high 14 empty-net points.

The remainder of the top 10:

No. 6 Cale Makar (Colorado) is off to one of the more decorated careers in NHL history – winning the Calder Trophy in his rookie season and making the 1st or 2nd all-star team four straight seasons since then.

No. 7 David Pastrnak (Boston) flipped the script, going from 61 goals in 2022-23 to 63 assists in 2023-24. Which Pasta will be served up this season?

No. 8 Norris Trophy-winning Quinn Hughes (Vancouver) starts his sixth NHL season a mere 77 points away from becoming the highest-scoring defenceman in Canucks’ history.

No. 9 Artemi Panarin (Rangers) has never had a minus season in nine NHL years and accumulated a career-high 49 goals and 120 points at age 32 last season.

No. 10 Mikko Rantanen (Colorado) is nothing if not consistent. He scored at a 100-point pace for the fifth straight regular season and a point-per-game pace for the sixth straight postseason.

The top-ranked goalie is No. 17 Igor Shesterkin of the Rangers – one of three Russian puck stoppers on the list. The others are Stanley Cup winners No. 39 Sergei Bobrovsky and No. 42 Andrei Vasilevskiy. Americans Connor Hellebuyck (No. 22) and Jeremy Swayman (No. 37) round out the group of five netminders. Canada has not had a goalie on the list since Carey Price in 2022.

Canada is represented by 17 players in the Top 50, three more than second-place USA (14). Sweden and Finland, the other 4 Nations Face-Off teams, are repped by five and four players, respectively. Russia has six players on the list.

Tampa Bay has a league-leading five players on the list: Kucherov, No. 18 Brayden Point, No. 24 Victor Hedman, No. 38 Jake Guentzel and Vasilevskiy. Eleven teams have no representation, including Calgary and Montreal.