Ranking the top 50 players in the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs - ESPN

The 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs are underway, and with them will come one of the most fascinating postseasons in recent years. With the old order fading — the two-time defending Cup champ (and three-time East champ) Florida Panthers missed the field entirely — and no obvious successor in place, the race for the Cup feels as open, and as consequential, as it has in years.

To help sort out which players might step up and make this postseason their own, let's consult the Goals Above Replacement (GAR) rankings — my version of «all-in-one» metrics like Hockey-Reference's Point Shares. The core philosophy of GAR is to quantify a player's total contribution (across offense, defense and goaltending) relative to a replacement-level player at the same position. To ensure the metric reflects reality, it also balances total leaguewide value by position: 60% for forwards, 30% for defensemen and 10% for goaltenders.

This year's GAR leader was, unsurprisingly, Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon. But not every player played exactly to their talent level the way he did this season. To account for a longer view of performance track records, I'm ranking players according to their Established Level — a weighted three-year average inspired by Bill James. (Specifically, we assign a weight of 3 to 2025-26, 2 to 2024-25 and 1 to 2023-24, then divide by 6 to get each player's overall average.) This gives more credit to recent dominance while also rewarding sustained excellence over time. To prevent the metric from lagging behind the league's newest stars, we also apply a value floor: No player's Established Level can be lower than 75% of their 2025-26 GAR.

With all of that housekeeping out of the way, here's our ranking of the skaters and goaltenders in