Fantasy Hockey Center Tiers for 2026-27: McDavid, MacKinnon and a Third Name That Belongs

The 2026-27 NHL season opens September 29 with an expanded 84-game schedule, the first time the league has played more than 82 games in over three decades. Two extra games per team sounds trivial. Across a full fantasy season, applied to every skater on every roster, it is not, and it is the single most overlooked variable in this year's draft prep.

Nowhere does that matter more than at center, where the top of the board is settled, the second tier reshuffled all summer, and the third tier is full of players whose situations changed materially in July.

Tier 1: the two who go first

Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon are the only two names in the first tier, and the order between them is a matter of format rather than opinion.

MacKinnon has posted at least 111 points in four consecutive seasons, which is the most bankable production profile in the sport. He also shoots more than McDavid, which matters in leagues that count shots on goal and goals separately.

McDavid remains the safest point accumulator in hockey. The complication this year is a new voice behind the bench: Mike Babcock is running the Oilers, and a coaching change at the top of a roster this established introduces variance that did not exist last season. Systems changes typically show up in the first quarter of a season before settling, and a fantasy manager drafting McDavid first overall is implicitly betting that the adjustment period is short.

Take MacKinnon first in category leagues that reward shots. Take McDavid first if points are the currency. Either is defensible, and the difference between them is smaller than the difference between tier one and tier two.

Tier 2: Celebrini has arrived

Macklin Celebrini signed a five-year extension worth $94 million this summer, making him the highest-paid player in the NHL, and the contract is a lagging indicator rather than a projection. He put up a point total in his teens that most players never reach in their prime, and he did it on a San Jose team that was still building.

The fantasy question is not whether he is good. It is whether San Jose's supporting cast has improved enough to sustain the production. The Sharks have been paying their young core, including Collin Graf on the back of a 46-point breakout, which is the kind of organizational behavior that suggests a team transitioning from rebuild to competitiveness.

Draft him as the third center off the board and be comfortable. The consensus rankings have him third or fourth, and the reasoning behind slotting him below the two veterans is essentially caution rather than evidence.

Leon Draisaitl belongs in this tier as well, with the same Babcock caveat that applies to McDavid.

Tier 3: the situations that changed

Connor Bedard is the most complicated name on the board. He signed a $75 million extension and is expected to open the season on the shelf, which creates a draft-day problem with no clean answer. A healthy Bedard in his fourth season, with Patrick Kane back in Chicago on a two-year deal, is a top-15 fantasy forward. A Bedard who misses the first stretch of an 84-game season is a player whose counting stats cannot recover.

Take him only if your league has injured reserve slots. In leagues without them, the roster spot cost is larger than the eventual production.

Robert Thomas is the tier's stability play. St. Louis publicly shut down trade talk around its top center this summer, which removes the single largest source of uncertainty in his projection. A first-line center whose situation is confirmed is worth more in August than a similar player whose name keeps appearing in rumors.

Dylan Larkin sits at the other end of that spectrum. His trade request has stalled while Detroit's front office turns over, and an unresolved request hanging over a season is a genuine risk to both usage and production.

The 84-game adjustment nobody is making

Here is the piece that separates a prepared draft from a lazy one. Every projection published before this summer was built on an 82-game baseline. The league added two games. That is a 2.4 percent increase in games played, and because fantasy scoring is a counting exercise, it flows directly into every counting category.

For an elite center projected at 110 points over 82 games, the naive adjustment is roughly three additional points. That sounds small. It is not small when it decides a category in a head-to-head final, and it is not small in a season-long points league where the margin between first and third is often a handful of production.

The correction is not uniform, either. Players who play full seasons capture the full benefit. Players with injury histories capture less of it, because their games-played projection was already below the schedule length. That means the expansion widens the gap between durable players and fragile ones, which is an argument for prioritizing availability over upside more than usual this year.

The Verdexed model take

Verdexed's skater projections rebuilt their baselines on the 84-game schedule rather than scaling 82-game numbers, which produces different results at the margins because the schedule expansion also changes rest patterns and back-to-back frequency.

The model's largest divergence from consensus is on Celebrini, whom it projects closer to the top two than most published rankings do. The reasoning is that his production was achieved on a team with limited supporting talent, and San Jose has since added around him. Players who produce without help tend to produce more when help arrives.

The second divergence is on Bedard, in the opposite direction. The model's games-played projection for a player expected to miss the start of the season is aggressive enough that his season-long output falls out of the top tier entirely, even with a strong per-game rate.

The third is structural: the model's durability weighting is higher this season than last, for the schedule-expansion reason above. That pushes players like Robert Thomas and other reliable full-season contributors up relative to higher-ceiling names with spotty availability.

What to do in your draft

Take MacKinnon or McDavid first without agonizing. Take Celebrini third and do not let a ranking sheet talk you into a veteran instead.

Avoid Bedard unless your format has an injured reserve slot, in which case he is a strong value at a discounted price.

Prioritize durability more than you did last year. The extra two games reward players who take the ice, and the market has not adjusted for it.

What's next

Camps open in September ahead of the earliest opening night in league history. The remaining unresolved storylines, including Adam Fantilli's restricted free agency in Columbus and the Connor Hellebuyck trade market, will shape the middle rounds more than the top of the board. Draft the top tier on talent and let the middle sort itself out in September.