NHL MVP tiers: You are probably still sleeping on Moritz Seider

Because defenseman never win the MVP award, people will continue to sleep on him.

The most maddening thing about MVP discussions (and especially in the NHL) is the different schools of thought that come from how “value” is defined. That argument is what MVP debates are ultimately about. We spend more time arguing about what value means and the questions that come from that than we do discussing the players themselves.

Those questions usually involve, but are not limited to:

• Do you simply vote for the best player?

• Is the most productive player the best player?

• Can you give a player an MVP vote if their team missed the playoffs?

• Isn’t the best player, by definition, the most valuable regardless of what their team does?

• Do you give more credit to a player that has dragged a mediocre team into a playoff spot than an equal (or better) player on one of the best teams in the league?

You probably have answers and opinions on all of those questions. They are probably very different from somebody else’s. Then everybody yells about it for a while and the most popular player from that season that had the most points usually ends up winning the damn award anyway.

It is true across pretty much every sport, but since hockey is my primary sport to write about, and since we are talking about hockey here, we are going to take an updated look at the 2025-26 NHL MVP race as the league plays through the stretch run of the 2025-26 regular season.

In my view there are seven players that cover pretty much every criteria you could ever ask for in an MVP discussion, and I will discuss them across multiple different tiers and criteria.

The seven players in question: Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche, Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers, Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Macklin Celebrini of the San Jose Sharks, Ilya Sorokin of the New York Islanders, Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Moritz Seider of the Detroit Red Wings.

Tier 1: The best/most productive player category (Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov)

This is really the simplest tier, and probably where your MVP is going to come from this season. At least one of these guys is certainly going to be a finalist. Probably two. All three might finish in the top-five.

Is it lazy to just look at the top-three point-producers and conclude they are the best players? Probably. But it is also how MVP voting tends to go in the NHL.

Consider the past 10 non-goalie winners of the award and where they finished in the NHL scoring race during that season (goalies won in 2025-25 and 2014-15):

• 2023-24: Nathan MacKinnon (2nd in scoring race)

• 2022-23: Connor McDavid (1st in scoring race)

• 2021-22: Auston Matthews (6th in scoring race)

• 2020-21: Connor McDavid (1st in scoring race)

• 2019-20: Leon Draisaitl (1st in scoring race)

• 2018-19: Nikita Kucherov (1st in scoring race)

• 2017-18: Taylor Hall (6th in scoring race)

• 2016-17: Connor McDavid (1st in scoring race)

• 2015-16: Patrick Kane (1st in scoring race)

• 2013-14: Sidney Crosby (1st in scoring race)

The only two winners in that group that finished lower than second in the scoring race were Matthews in 2022-23 and Hall in 2017-18. They were both sixth. Matthews also led the league with 60 goals in his MVP-winning season, a number that only a handful of players have reached in the modern era. So even then he had big offensive numbers and a big league-leading number outside of points.

Hall was the increasingly rare “dragged a bad team into the playoffs” winner, which was also aided by an extremely loud discussion regarding McDavid (the leading scorer that season) and the Oilers missing the playoffs.

The bottom line is: Big point totals and big goal numbers usually get you big votes.

While it can be lazy and sometimes misleading to just look at point totals to evaluate a player and their value, I do think in this instance these three guys legitimately are three of the best players in the NHL this season.

McDavid and MacKinnon get the most attention, and are the most eye-popping and dynamic players to watch given their speed and offensive brilliance, but Kucherov is right there with them in terms of production. He already has 104 points in 59 games this season, and has topped the 100-point mark four years in a row. Had it not been for injuries and a shortened season back in 2019-20 he would very likely be working on eight consecutive 100-point seasons at this rate. It is video game stuff, and it is a big reason (though, as we will discuss in a few minutes, not the only reason) the Lightning Stanley Cup window is still wide open this season.

The thing that could potentially separate McDavid from the other two is that he will also have the “value” argument on his side given how awful the rest of his team is when he is not on the ice.

He not only has the offensive production and the argument for best player, he also fits into the other category of “value” by carrying a bad team. Even with Leon Draisaitl on that Edmonton roster, it would be a lousy team without McDavid. Just look at how badly they have been outplayed, out-chanced and out-scored when he is off the ice versus the Avalanche and Lightning without MacKinnon and Kucherov.

MacKinnon is incredible, but that entire Colorado team is also a monster, especially after getting Nazem Kadri at the trade deadline. The fact they are still that good when MacKinnon is off the ice is simply staggering. Think about that for a second. They still play like a Stanley Cup contender when the NHL’s second-leading scorer is sitting on the bench.

It’s stupid.

To MacKinnon’s credit, when he is on the ice they are outscoring teams 81-27 with an even better expected goal share, all of which are also stupidly good.

I am not sure which of them wins it, but if I were a betting man I would put money on one of these three as things look right now.

Tier 2: The MVP is probably always a goalie category: (Ilya Sorokin and Andrei Vasilevskiy)

There is not a single position in the NHL that impacts the overall performance of a team more than the goalie, both positively and negatively. I have said it in this space (and other spaces) many, many times, but a great goalie makes a mediocre team a playoff team, a playoff team a contender, and a contender a potential champion. A bad goalie works in the exact opposite direction.

Show me a team that has unexpectedly exceeded preseason expectations, and there is a good chance a strong goaltending performance is behind it.

Show me a team that has unexpectedly failed to meet preseason expectations, and there is a good chance a bad goaltending performance is behind it.

When it comes to the former category, it is not totally unheard of to see a goalie take home the MVP award. It just takes a superhuman level of performance to get them enough votes for it.

It happened for Connor Hellebuyck with the Winnipeg Jets a year ago.

It happened with Carey Price and the Montreal Canadiens back in 2014-15.

It happened for Jose Theodore, also with the Canadiens, back in 2001-02.

It happened with Dominik Hasek in back-to-back years during the 1996-97 and 1997-98 seasons.

Those are the most recent examples. There probably should have been more since then. In fact, I will go as far as to say there SHOULD have been more since.

While I do not anticipate it to happen this season, there are two goalies that could put together a pretty compelling argument for it.

Let’s talk about them, as well as the third-tier of MVP contenders that includes a 19-year-old second-year superstar, and the one player on this list that will not get anywhere near enough attention in the discussion even though they should.