Matthews, Nylander finish in top 15 of Daily Faceoff’s NHL forward rankings

Nearing the end of summer rankings season, Daily Faceoff’s Paul Pidutti is doing one last deep dive into the top players in the NHL, using a methodology he calls the High Noon system. Created using adjusted point shares, the system is meant to find the middle ground between the simplicity of the scoring race and the complexity of analytical data (see the full explanation here).

On Wednesday, Pidutti released his High Noon rankings of the NHL’s top 50 forwards. Representing the Toronto Maple Leafs on the list are Auston Matthews at #7, William Nylander at #15, and John Tavares at #32.

Matthews suffered one of the biggest drops among the top 20, falling four places from his third-place ranking last year, passed this year by Leon Draisaitl (at #1), Nikita Kucherov (#4), Kirill Kaprizov (#5), and David Pastrnak (#6). Toronto’s captain suffered lingering injury issues through last season and saw his numbers drop tremendously, but will look to bounce back this year. Pidutti’s system does account for the results of the last three seasons (weighted by recency), so last year’s slow production hasn’t dropped him too low.

Nylander’s 15th place finish is a seven-spot improvement from 2024’s 22nd, which was a seven-spot climb from 2023’s 29th. The Swedish winger continues to show what he can do with three consecutive 40-goal seasons, now entering the second year of his eight-year agreement. With the departure of Mitch Marner, he’s set to take on a bigger role than ever, and he looks primed to rise to the occasion.

Tavares, meanwhile, is up 22 places from a 54th place finish last year, after an impressive 38-goal, 74-point campaign in the 2024-25 season. Not bad considering they’ll be saving over 6 million dollars on the his contract starting this year.

Of note for Maple Leafs fans, Mitch Marner comes in at 12th, falling slightly from last year’s 11th. And for the first time in five years, Connor McDavid is not first on the list, slightly edged out by Draisaitl, who climbs five places from his sixth-place finish last year. In fairness, Draisaitl had a huge 2024-25 season, and McDavid saw a slight dip in his production (to a meager 100 points, mind you). Nathan MacKinnon comes in just behind the Edmonton Oilers pair in third.

What are your thoughts on this year’s High Noon forward rankings?