The Athletic posted a meaty article this morning in which it explained how the writers assembled their Top 100 players into four groups, and ranked them by four “tiers”…
It’s the third annual NHL Player Tiers, where we place the top 100 skaters into four groups: the MVPs, the franchise players, the All-Stars, and the bonafide top-liners. The goal is simple: blend analytics and scouting to figure out where the league’s best stand going into the 2022-23 season.
This is more than one person’s ranking, it’s more than the results of a model, and it’s more than the collected perspective of various people inside the game. We want this to be the most complete list of hockey’s best that you can find, one that started based on numbers, then morphed into what it is today after hours of discussions internally and externally.
And if you guessed that Moritz Seider is both the Wings’ second mention and a player who is considered not-necessarily third-tier player (with Dylan Larkin finishing in the fourth tier), you’d be right:
Tier 3B
The Big Debate: Is Moritz Seider a franchise player?
Detroit’s star defenseman Moritz Seider was arguably the biggest point of contention in this entire exercise. We put him at 3B, where he eventually ended, and the league had opinions about that. Almost every NHL scout or executive polled said he should be higher, with several arguing he should be in the second tier, saying he was already a clear top-10 defenseman in the league.
“When you watched Seider last season he looked pretty special. He’s going to be an impact player in the league for a long time. I wouldn’t take several of the defensemen you have ahead of him if I needed to win a game tomorrow,” said one scout.
However, several of the analysts polled thought we were being too aggressive and that Seider needed to be lowered. “I think the case with Seider is he had a good year. Is he ready to do that every year? There’s a difference between having a season as the No. 1 defenseman and being a No. 1 defenseman and the reliability of showing up every year to do it,” said one analyst.
The appeal of Seider is obvious from a scouting perspective. He’s a bit of a rare treasure as this huge, highly-mobile and physical defenseman with legit offense. He has early indicators he could be this generation’s Chris Pronger, even though he only has one NHL season under his belt and needs to show that level of play consistently. Analytically, he was a beast in the first half, performing exceptionally well despite facing some of the toughest usage in the league. His defensive numbers sagged a bit in the second half, but that was a problem that plagued much of the team.
In discussing Seider, we debated whether it made sense to have him and Jack Hughes in different tiers. Dom sent out a poll to his readers to even ask that question which leaned Seider. When Corey did his ranking of the best U23 players in the NHL, Hughes and Seider were 1-2, with a lean to Hughes.
We’ll see how Mo does next season, but after being a divisive No. 6 pick in 2019, the next phase of the debate will be about how quickly the Calder Trophy recipient should be elevated to the highest points of the league. He has Tier 1 upside.
Continued at length (paywall); I don’t see him as Chris Pronger 2.0, because he skates better and isn’t as inherently mean, but I’m a little less concerned about a “sophomore slump” than most are at this point.
