{"id":796969,"date":"2026-08-01T07:14:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T07:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/796969\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T07:14:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T07:14:44","slug":"where-the-avalanches-top-center-duo-ranks-in-the-nhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/796969\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the Avalanche&#8217;s Top Center Duo Ranks in the NHL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Athletic\u2019s Harman Dayal recently ranked every NHL team\u2019s top center duo, grouping them into tiers from best to worst. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7467346\/2026\/07\/28\/nhl-team-center-duos-ranking-best-worst\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">It\u2019s a worthwhile read,<\/a> and it\u2019s clear a lot of thought went into the rankings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unsurprisingly, the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 tandem of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl sits alone in the top tier. The second tier features just two teams: the two-time Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers with Aleksander Barkov and Sam Bennett, and the Colorado Avalanche with Nathan MacKinnon and Brock Nelson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ll let you check out the rest of Dayal\u2019s rankings for yourself, but one thing that stood out to me was just how much Colorado\u2019s center depth has improved from where it was even 24 months ago. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For a few years, the Avalanche leaned almost exclusively on MacKinnon. There wasn\u2019t always another true top-six center behind him. Now they have Nelson as a legitimate No. 2 option, while Nazem Kadri, Nic Roy and Fedor Svechkov provide even more depth down the middle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you believe the Avalanche have one of the NHL\u2019s three best center duos? If not, where would you rank them? Top five? Top 10?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic\u2019s Harman Dayal recently ranked every NHL team\u2019s top center duo, grouping them into tiers from best&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[97481,1223,39780,385,99],"class_list":["post-796969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-brock-nelson","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}