Every NHL team’s top-6 center duos ranked from best to worst: Oilers still lead

If you pay attention to consensus rankings prior to an NHL Draft, there’s always a team or two that ends up “reaching” for a center or defenseman in the first 10-15 picks. In public, teams will say they’re targeting the best player available, but behind the scenes, there can be a bias — whether it’s conscious or subconscious — in favor of players with top-six center or top-four defenseman potential.

Why? Well, those players at premium positions are difficult to acquire on the trade or free-agent market, and often involve overpaying, either in terms of a UFA contract or the trade price. Top-six wingers and goaltenders are significantly easier to acquire in comparison.

Sure, you’ll have a rare team like Vegas (Jack Eichel) or Los Angeles (Pierre-Luc Dubois) that wins the sweepstakes for a disgruntled player, but high-end top-six centers in their prime — especially first-line ones — are mostly homegrown talent.

For the second year in a row, we’re going to examine the state of every NHL team’s top-six centers ahead of the upcoming season.

A clear-cut ranking from No. 1 to No. 32 is a futile exercise because the margin separating a team with say the 10th and 16th best center duo is razor thin. That’s why we’ll sort the top-six center duos into tiers where the stratification is a bit more distinct. To do that, I leaned on a combination of statistics (point production, play-driving ability, defensive impact and more), context (linemate quality, age) and the eye test.

Teams are sorted into tiers strictly based on their projection for 2023-24 — we’re not factoring for future potential at all. We’re going to include contract data for reference (and maybe even briefly mention a contract in the writeup if it’s especially interesting) but it is not going to influence where each team slots.

Tier 1: Generational

Edmonton Oilers: Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl

Contracts: McDavid $12.5 million AAV, three years left; Draisaitl $8.5 million AAV, two years left

Who honestly thought a 150-point season was still possible in this era? McDavid continues racking up ridiculous, video-game-like numbers, as he popped off for 64 goals and 153 points last year.

On top of having the best player on the planet, Draisaitl has scored at higher than a 100-point pace in five straight seasons and dominated with 20 goals and 50 points in 28 games over his last two playoff runs.

Together, they’re the engine of the best power-play in NHL history, with a 32.4 percent conversion rate that finished 6.4 percent higher than the next-best team last season.

Edmonton only has two years left on Draisaitl’s sweetheart $8.5 million cap hit deal. After that he — and then McDavid the following summer — will become significantly more expensive against the cap.

Tier 2: Elite

New Jersey Devils: Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier

Contracts: Hughes $8 million AAV, seven years left; Hischier $7.25 million AAV, four years left

New Jersey is fully…