Thank you, as always, for reading the Devils’ Advocates Substack! If you enjoy the quasi-daily content, please consider subscribing and sharing with your friends, family, and any Devils fan you know. It is completely free of charge and helps out quite a bit!
Consider checking out the Devils’ Advocates Podcast, which features weekly episodes chock-full of in-depth content and exciting guest appearances. They’ll be available on this Substack, but you can also listen on your favorite platforms at the following links:
Be sure to check out my recent appearance on The Hockey PDOcast — Dimitri Filipovic had me on yesterday to talk shop about the Devils’ off-season, where they went wrong since 2022-23, and any high hopes and concerns we have heading into 2026-27.
It’s been a quiet August; for the Devils, there have been no trades or signings since they signed Colin White to a one-year, two-way contract on July 30. Given the silence around the league, it’s as good a time as ever to gauge how the Devils stack up against the rest of their division in terms of their forward corps, defensive corps, and goaltending.
First up: the centers.
For this list, if a player has an asterisk next to their name, it means that they primarily play another position but can and have played center in the past. I’ll be taking that into account when doing the rankings, for both good and bad.
Spoiler alert: this is a difficult list (until #1).
With Mathew Barzal predominantly playing on the wing in recent seasons (though he admittedly played more down the middle than in previous seasons in 2025-26), Bo Horvat is the Islanders’ bona fide best center. He’s a good enough player, but he’s a low-end 1C. Unfortunately for them, that’s where their talent takes a nosedive.
Brayden Schenn has long been one of the more overpaid pivots in the league relative to his on-ice value. He brings some production, but the reality is that he has lost his minutes more often than not in the last half-decade. Jean-Gabriel Pageau, once one of the better third-line centers in the NHL, had a dismal season and isn’t getting any younger — his Wins Above Replacement (WAR) of -8.2 for the year was the worst of any player on the Islanders. He’s 33, too, so there’s much less hope of a rebound and much more concern of his age curve catching up with him than there ever has been.
Casey Cizikas is a perfectly fine fourth-line center — perhaps even a good one — so he is a plus (even though he is 35 years old and may be on the decline). Calum Ritchie, though very young and still developing, had pretty putrid underlying numbers for the Islanders in 2025-26, sporting the second-worst WAR on the team (-6.3). He’s likely to stay on the wing for now, though, I’d have to imagine.
In terms of high-end talent, the Flyers are in a similar boat to the Islanders — in fact, Horvat is probably the best center between the two teams and Trevor Zegras is certainly more of a high-end 2C than a 1C. However, when looking at the second line and beyond, Philadelphia has a distinct advantage.
Noah Cates is an excellent middle-six center, somehow ending the 2025-26 season with more WAR than any other forward on the team. Most of that value is on the defensive side of the puck, truly excelling at shutting the other team down. Christian Dvorak is a black hole defensively, but provides legitimate offensive juice, and Sean Couturier, at this point in his career, is a perfectly fine 4C, albeit far overpaid for his role now.
Denver Barkey, who will be entering his sophomore campaign, seems poised to take a step forward next season and has a decent chance to play down the middle. Noel Acciari has been a decent bottom-six center for a number of years at this point.
The biggest problem I see with this center group is that, outside of Zegras and occasionally Dvorak, there’s not a whole lot of playdriving or offensive capability. Most of the value from Cates, Couturier, Barkey, and Acciari comes purely on the defensive side of the puck. In certain environments, that can certainly work, but it puts a ton of pressure on the top-end of the lineup to score and the defense to prevent goals the other way — banking on low-scoring affairs is a high-risk way to play hockey.
The New York Rangers’ center depth is nothing to write home about, especially considering that they have only four centers on their roster. Mika Zibanejad enjoyed a resurgent season and looked more like the low-end 1C he has been for a number of years. JT Miller had a relatively awful season compared to his standards — his -1.5 WAR was the lowest it has been since 2013 — so I would anticipate he looks more like a top-six player again in 2026-27.
Noah Laba was quietly very good in his rookie campaign, giving the Rangers pretty excellent two-way play in their bottom-six. Given that he is still just 23 and has more acclimation to do at the NHL level, I wouldn’t be surprised if he cemented himself as a strong third-line option this coming season. Joe Veleno is another relatively young player, but he isn’t quite as talented and has struggled somewhat from an underlying perspective throughout his career. Still, there are skills to bank on, even if the likelier route is that he loses his minutes.
Columbus will be stuck in the mushy middle here until Adam Fantilli takes the real, tangible step forward that has been expected of him for years. He has all the potential in the world but hasn’t found a way for it to translate to superior on-ice results, having accrued a WAR of just 2.9 last season. He’s going to get paid big-time, and he needs to perform as such, too.
Sean Monahan and Charlie Coyle, though, are a strong middle-six duo. Coyle’s 11.7 WAR was tops among Columbus forwards in 2025-26, with Monahan’s 2.8 being both respectable and a step down from what we saw even one year prior. If he surges back to his normal self and Coyle maintains that level of two-way excellence, they should be in a good spot.
Cole Sillinger looked pretty good last season as well, tying his career-high of 33 points and having some of the best underlying metrics of his career. If he can take a step forward and push one of the aforementioned names down in the lineup, it’s entirely possible that the Blue Jackets end up higher in the standings than expected.
Dmitri Voronkov’s role has been frustratingly diminished from where it was in his rookie campaign (where he predominantly played center), but he is still a viable two-way player. Isac Lundestrom is defensively excellent as well, even if he’s a black hole on offense, and will provide Columbus with quality fourth-line minutes.
The new-look Washington Capitals saw most of their change on the wings, but they did add a quality center to their deep roster in Boone Jenner, longtime captain of the division rival Blue Jackets. The 33-year-old is on the wrong side of the aging curve, but is still a strong third-line center when healthy, providing his team with apt two-way play.
Dylan Strome is more of a strong 2C than a first-line player, but he has immense offensive value as a facilitator and has quietly been a near-point-per-game player since getting to the Capitals. With increased talent around him, there’s no reason he can’t get back to that threshold. Pierre-Luc Dubois has dealt with some injury troubles, but is an effective second-line center when suited up and should also take a bit of a step forward given the depth of the Capitals’ wingers.
Ilya Protas lined up as a center, next to his brother Aliaksei, in his first four NHL games (where he produced four points, mind you), but given the depth of the roster, it’ll be interesting to see if he stays in that position. Justin Sourdif, meanwhile, was arguably the league’s best fourth-line pivot last season — the youngster took a gigantic step forward in his development and looked the part of a two-way monster in his somewhat sheltered minutes. Kudos to the Capitals’ professional scouting department for seeing that in him.
The Hurricanes find themselves above the Capitals simply because they have a legitimate first-line center in Sebastian Aho, who has been a top-20 center for many years now. He’s the best player on this list so far, with unbelievably strong offensive chops (16.7 WAR just on the offensive side of things in 2025-26) and two-way adaptability to boot. Logan Stankoven really came into his own in the postseason, but solidified himself as a solid 2C throughout the year by virtue of his unparalleled work ethic and deadly shot.
Behind those two is Jordan Staal, one of the league’s premier shutdown centers who has long been tasked with some of the most difficult minutes in the league. He’s always seemed to come out on top, and did so while scoring 20 goals for the first time since the 2015-16 season. Mark Jankowski is the prototypical Carolina forward; one who wins his minutes handily, is an avid forechecker, and provides two-way value.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi will find himself riding pine for most of the season, but he isn’t a bad player by any means, either.
I have the Penguins just above the Hurricanes here, largely in part due to the volume difference between the two teams. Sidney Crosby is still miraculously a top-20 center in the NHL, still never having dropped below a point-per-game after a 74-point, 68-game campaign in 2025-26. Evgeni Malkin slid mostly to the wing last season, but found the fountain of youth at age 39 and had an incredible, point-per-game-plus season last year.
Behind Crosby on the depth chart is Ben Kindel, who already looks like one of the steals of his draft class. He disappeared in the playoffs a bit, but the then-18-year-old did not look out of place whatsoever in his 77 games, perhaps fizzling out over the course of the year due to fatigue, workload, and adaptation to far and away the best hockey league on the planet, but never looking like he didn’t belong. He’s poised to take a step forward — and a big one at that — and ultimately could cement himself as the player ready to take the reins as their 1C when Crosby retires.
Tommy Novak, Blake Lizotte, Conor Dewar, and Hendrix Lapierre all provide positive value in depth roles and will make up one of the more underrated bottom sixes in the league. Each of them is a plus on both sides of the puck, though Lizotte and Lapierre admittedly thrive more on the defense than offense. Still, their fourth line will be made up of three dogs and will be a complete nightmare to play against.
There was never a question that the Devils have the best center depth in the Metropolitan Division, winning the battle in both high-end talent and sheer volume. Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier are one of two top-six duos in the league in which both players are top-20 centers (with the other, of course, being the Edmonton Oilers). Hughes, when healthy, is a top-seven player in the NHL, and Hischier is a dual-threat, two-way monster. Those two combined for 19.3 WAR, with the former having missed significant time once again and the latter having a monumentally down year by his standards (4.8 WAR). Assuming health and a bit more favorable deployment for Hischier, this duo should rival the best of them.
Behind him is Cody Glass, who shot a surely unsustainable 18.3% but had a career-best 19 goals in 2025-26. On top of being his typically dominant defensive self, he took a step forward offensively and looked like one of, if not the best, third-line pivots in the league last season. There are some who believe he is better suited to be the team’s fourth-line center, but the reality is that he is perfectly fine where he is.
I think it’s somewhat likely that Nick Bjugstad gets shipped off to clear additional cap space and acquire another tradeable asset, given how crowded the Devils’ roster is, but he is a perfectly fine fourth-line center for the most part. He’s undoubtedly declining, but still provides some value.
The Devils also have a ton of could-be centers in Jesper Boqvist (who mostly played on the wing in his time with the Panthers but was a center in his first go-around with New Jersey), Evan Rodrigues (who played down the middle quite a bit last season but has primarily played on the wing throughout his career), and Dawson Mercer (who has been forced to slide to center at times when the injury bug has hit the team). Of the three, I think it’s likeliest that Rodrigues plays at center, but anything is possible, and having the alternatives does give them tangible depth at the position. Boqvist is a speedy, forechecking, defense-first forward at this point in time. Rodrigues is a jack-of-all-trades who can effectively slot in anywhere in the lineup. Mercer is a complementary player who plays un-maddening, consistent hockey and has been effective in a shutdown role throughout his career.
I think Amadeus Lombardi is another wild card, too — it’s clear he’s a part of the vision moving forward. He’s played mostly center with the Grand Rapids Griffins, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on the wing at the NHL level.
There you have it: the centers of each Metropolitan Division team ranked from worst to first. It should come as no surprise that the Devils are at the top of the crop here, given that they have the two best centers in the division and the biggest volume of centers to boot.
Tune in next time, when I’ll be evaluating each Metro team’s winger group.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.