NHL Network’s 2025 Top-20 Defensemen List is Awful

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Each year, the NHL Network releases a list that looks at their top-20 at each position. Recently, they revealed their top defenders around the NHL, and it left the majority of fans stunned.

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Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes started the list as the top two, which was a surprise to nobody, but after that, it went off the rails.

Having Zach Werenski and Miro Heiskanen at three and four can be argued. It’s not a common opinion, and a lot of fans disagreed with that, but it’s not the craziest take in the world. However, placing Victor Hedman right after to round out the top five was a shock. On top of that, Rasmus Dahlin is too low, Jaccob Slavin is too low, Thomas Harley is too low, and Adam Fox was genuinely disrespected with a placement at 16th.

Adam Fox New York Rangers
Adam Fox, New York Rangers (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)

Lane Hutson being on the list at all was a hot take, and while Montreal Canadiens fans loved it, it seems like a stretch to have him that high this early in his career. All in all, this list was not great.

Hedman & Fox Should Be Flipped

Hedman was once a strong defender at both ends of the ice, and his ability to provide offensive production while shutting down the NHL’s top players made him one of the most feared blue-liners in the league, but as he gets older, he has started to decline in a big way.

It seems as though they considered Stanley Cups as an individual stat when considering where to put Hedman, which I think was an awful idea.

While having slightly improved last season, his overall numbers show he has not been as strong in the defensive zone in recent seasons.

Offensively, he’s quite good and still can produce, considering he had 66 points through 79 games last season. However, his decline defensively should have dropped him on their list. On top of that, there is no way players like Slavvin, Dahlin, Harley, or Evan Bouchard should be below him.

He could have swapped spots with Fox on that list, and that’s a genuine take. New York Rangers fans seem split down the middle after a rough 2024-25 campaign where their team missed the playoffs and was an overall dumpster fire, but even with horrible defensive partners that dragged him down, Fox’s numbers remained elite.

Just because the team around him wasn’t good doesn’t mean he wasn’t good. Every metric would say he is a top-5 defender in the NHL, and, unfortunately, a bad team season shadowed what was a strong season for Fox.

Hutson vs Bouchard

Before Habs fans come after me on my take about Hutson, let me explain.

Hutson has a lot of skill and is arguably one of the most dominant offensive defenders in the NHL already, all while being one of the most fun players to watch. However, his lack of defensive awareness and inability to keep up with top talent this early in his career should’ve kept him out of the top-20. I would predict that Hutson will become a top-5 defender within the next few seasons, but he still has some learning to do.

Many fans will compare him to Bouchard, but the key difference is that Bouchard has not only elevated his offensive game but has also been able to stabilize his defensive game, all while finding a way to dominate in the postseason in consecutive seasons. His standout turnovers are usually all fans look at when they hear about Bouchard, but when you see how strong his numbers are, it’s a no-brainer that he should be considered one of the league’s elite defenders.

No, his even-strength defensive numbers don’t look great, but don’t just focus on that. His ability to keep the puck in the offensive zone makes it so that he often doesn’t have to play in the defensive zone, which is why his overall war percentage is as high as it is.

The rookie of the year did well, too, but his numbers aren’t nearly as good as Bouchard’s, and I would argue his defensive game was too weak to consider him a top-20 defender at this point.

That’s not to say he’s a bad defender, because he isn’t, but he has some room to grow, and his shortcomings should have kept him out of their top-20 list.

At the end of the day, it’s impossible to make a list like this that makes everyone happy, but at the end of the day, some things on this list were too insane to ignore. We’ll see how their list looks by the end of the 2025-26 season, but as of right now, it doesn’t look great.

As the 2025-26 season approaches, be sure to continue following The Hockey Writers as your source for news from around the NHL and the hockey world.

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