Talent tiers finale: The best and worst from the Canadian NHL teams

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Our five-part talent tiers series concluded Wednesday after grading goaltending across the 32 National Hockey League teams. Today, we summarize the results across the positional groups, with a focus on the positives and the areas of concern for the seven Canadian teams.

As a housekeeping matter, if you missed any part of the series, the positional group pieces are linked below. 

Let’s run through the aggregated results. We will take another run at the tiers at the halfway point of the regular season, with a couple of tweaks – notably, consolidation of the left wing and right wing positions into a broader ‘wing’ category to avoid position interchangeability issues.

The Canadian teams were generally well represented in the talent tiers – the Toronto Maple Leafs were the highest-graded team of the seven, but the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames were also inside of the top 10 – Edmonton through the absolute strength of the team at the centre position; Calgary, for what they can do defensively.

Notably, three other teams finished in the playoff contention window, the Vancouver Canucks (No. 15), the Ottawa Senators (No. 18), and Winnipeg Jets (No. 20). Across these teams, it was generally one core weakness that drove their overall grade towards the middle of the pack. Bringing up the rear is a rebuilding Montreal Canadiens team (No. 28).

In reverse order, let’s start with Montreal and work our way up.

Montreal Canadiens

What We Liked: Martin St. Louis and the rest of the Canadiens organization need this season to evaluate the core parts of the roster and decide which players will still be in stow when the team is ready to contend. If there is an area to be bullish with this group, it is down the middle of