The Central Division is widely regarded as the most cutthroat and difficult to succeed in across the NHL.
Between the Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, Minnesota Wild, and Utah Mammoth, as well as the rebuilding St. Louis Blues and Nashville Predators, which were both among the last teams out of the Western Conference playoffs, and the 2024-25 Presidents' Trophy winners, the Winnipeg Jets, points are at a premium in basically every rivalry game.
The Chicago Blackhawks are also in this division. Just want to make sure that's on the record.
With highly competitive divisions invariably comes some of the best centers in the world, because center is the most important position, and to be elite, you are required to have at least one, and often two or three, very good options up the middle.
But as it stands right now, who projects as the best centers in the Central Division for the 2026-27 season? Here are the top three:
1. NATHAN MACKINNON, COLORADO AVALANCHE
The résumé is well known by now. Four straight seasons finishing top-five for the Hart Trophy as the league's MVP.
MacKinnon won the Hart and the Ted Lindsay Award in 2023-24 with 51 goals and 89 assists for 140 points, the third-highest point total for a single season in the salary cap era.
Then he had a"down" year with just 116 points, and followed that up by"bouncing back" to win the Rocket Richard with a career high 53 goals.
Just an all-world player, one of the very best at any position in the sport.
There may come a day at some point in the next several years when, at age 31 and beyond, he takes a step back. Certainly, you might be concerned about the injury that made him look so limited as the playoffs wore on, with just two assists as the Avalanche were swept in the Western Conference final, but taking the summer to recover will allow him to hit the ground running again in September.
Everyone already knows what that looks like.
2. WYATT JOHNSTON, DALLAS STARS
How many players would you guess have more goals than Johnston over the last three seasons?
Everyone ahead of him is virtually a multi-time All-Star Game participant, major award winner, or 50-goal scorer. Johnston's game took a major step forward last season, with 45 goals (including a league-leading 27 on the power play), and at age 23, there's still another level for his game to reach.
The Stars, already a great team, are now counting on him way more than they did in his first three seasons, and he delivered in a major way. Is another 40-plus goal season realistic? Maybe not.
He greatly exceeded his previous shooting percentages without shooting the puck more, but he could find even more room to grow on the defensive side.
There's so much to like here, especially if things even out a bit. Johnston might not have an MVP-caliber ceiling like MacKinnon, or the next guy on the list, but he could be just a tier below them for many years to come.
3. CONNOR BEDARD, CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS
Now this is a player with an MVP ceiling. He just hasn't had much of an opportunity to show it off.
This past season was the first in which Bedard, with almost no help, eclipsed a point per game, scoring 30 goals and 45 assists for 75 points in just 69 games. He played nearly 21 minutes a night on a rotten roster, and staying healthy has been one of his biggest issues.
In fact, before the injury that knocked him out of the lineup from Dec. 12 to Jan. 9, he was scoring at a pace that would have given him 50 goals and 66 assists for 116 points if he'd played the full 82 games.
At that point, we wouldn't be talking about Johnston being the No. 2 center in this division at all.
But after he returned from injury, Bedard posted a way more pedestrian 11 goals, 20 assists, and 31 points in 38 games. Now that he's likely to spend most of next season with an aging ice-vision wizard like Patrick Kane, it would be really easy to project Bedard hitting triple digits in points, except he's going to miss another 20 or so games with a shoulder injury suffered in training a few weeks ago.
They say the best ability is availability, and Bedard has to prove that's in his toolbox.
But besides that, and the fact that his team is no good, everything else about his game is so exciting that it's impossible to leave him off this list.