If you’re looking for a top-heavy group, nobody beats the Central.
The “other” Western Conference division had the Presidents’ Trophy winners from Colorado and the third-place overall team in Dallas, not to mention the No. 7 finisher in Minnesota.
Those three teams combined for 151 wins and captured nearly 68.5 percent of possible standings points, but we can’t consider ourselves responsible journalists unless we look at the rest of the division—namely Utah, St. Louis, Nashville, Winnipeg and Chicago—only one of which (Utah) made the playoffs while the other four finished among the league’s bottom 11 out of 32.
Maybe Nathan MacKinnon is the best player in the league. Certainly you can argue that either Quinn Hughes or Cale Makar is its best defenseman.
But put the Avalanche and Wild together with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam and the collective quickly goes downhill.