2026-27 NHL Fantasy Hockey Rankings: Top 10 Defensemen

With the 2026-27 NHL season right around the corner, The Hockey News is counting down the top 10 fantasy players at each position. Today's focus is on defensemen.

The wrinkle for defensemen in fantasy this season is the inclusion of Evan Bouchard in the elite tier with Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar. In leagues that favor goals and shots, there’s a good argument Bouchard should be taken over Hughes.

The most exciting part about the current game is the increasing number of defensemen who can score, which is why young players such as Matthew Schaefer and Lane Hutson are ranked so high. It’s still a position that doesn’t produce a lot of scorers, which makes them all the more valuable in fantasy hockey. 

Players are ranked by the position they played the most often last season while considering traditional fantasy scoring categories, including goals, assists, power-play points, shots on goal, penalty minutes, blocks, and hits. 

Over the past five seasons, Makar ranks in the top three in virtually every category, including goals, assists, plus-minus, power-play points, shots and average ice time. His 1.08 points-per-game average is the highest number among defensemen in the cap era. 

When it comes to points, Hughes is a close second but pales in comparison to Makar in goals, shots and blocks. He scored at a 90-point pace in 48 games with the Wild, and we can easily expect that trend to continue.

While there was some fear that Hughes’ ice time would be cut back on a deeper team, that clear wasn’t the case, and in some games skated over 30 minutes for the Minnesota Wild.

Bouchard rounds out the top three with a league-best 95 points last season, 14 more than Norris winner Zach Werenski.

It’s worth noting Bouchard’s even-strength play has improved and he’s missed just two games over the past five seasons, making him the most durable of the top three. Bouchard’s range of outcomes is wider, but at his best he possesses 25-goal, 90-point potential. 

Back-to-back 80-point seasons puts Werenski at the top of this second tier, as does elite shot volume, where he’s registered over 100 more shots on goal (558) than the next closest defenseman (Bouchard, 456). What holds him back is elite power-play production, though that’s more a reflection of his team.

A slight worry to Werenski’s fantasy value would be a potential trade where his minutes are scaled back on a better team, but that was the concern with Hughes as well when he was traded to the Wild and it ended up being a non-story. 

In banger leagues, which count count blocks and hits, you could easily make the argument Seider belongs in the first tier of defenders. What prevents him from doing so is a roughly 20-something gap in points, but otherwise Seider provides 200-block and 200-hit potential. That’s almost impossible to find. 

Hutson has the potential to lead defensemen in scoring, but will likely fall short because of his lack of shot volume. There's a chance that changes. Remember, Hughes’ fantasy production made a huge jump in 2023-24 when he increased his shooting volume. We could see the same here for Hutson. 

It’s interesting Dahlin’s point production (career-high 74 points last season) has increased while his shot blocking (79, lowest in five seasons) and hitting (67, career low) rate have moved in the opposite direction. Had both aspects of his game moved in the same direction, he’d be a top-tier defenseman in fantasy. 

Schaefer is wunderkind who could force his way into the first tier before the end of the season. There have been only 39 instances in the cap era where a defenseman has managed to score 20 goals in a season, and to do so as a rookie without an eyebrow-raising shooting percentage showcases his massive potential.

If there’s a defenseman on this list who could make the jump into 90-point territory, Schaefer and Hutson would be the top two candidates. 

Chychrun will quarterback a Washington Capitals power play that will feature Alex Ovechkin for one more season, who is coming off a career-worst season and poised for a bounce back. Goals and shots are Chychrun’s bread-and-butter fantasy value; only Makar has scored more goals than Chychrun over the past two seasons.

Two notes of caution: Chychrun’s shooting percentage skews much higher with the Capitals than with his two previous teams, and there will be times where head coach Spencer Carbery experiments with Cole Hutson as the offensive play driver. 

It’s a three-way tie for the 10th spot. 

This is now Sanderson’s team, who scored at a 66-point pace last season and emerging as one of the league’s better-in-real-life, all-round defenders.

It’s hard to go wrong with McAvoy, Sanderson or Heiskanen, but Sanderson presents the most untapped upside at 24 years old entering his fifth season. Increasing his shot total should push him into close to the 20-goal range.

The drawback with Heiskanen is his volatile production, which will depend on what situations he’s deployed in and how the Dallas Stars split duties between him and Thomas Harley. His floor may be the lowest because if Heiskanen is used in matchup situations he simply won’t be concerned with putting up points.

But if the role is PP1 and lots of offensive-zone deployment — his career-high 73-point season in 2022-23 came with a career-high 63.82 percent offensive-zone starts at 5-on-5, per NaturalStatTrick, and he hasn’t come close to that deployment since — Heiskanen’s ceiling is 80 points.  

Nobody noticed because McAvoy played just 69 games, but he had arguably the best season of his career, scoring at a 72-point pace. What stood out the most from the previous season was his power-play production, where he jumped from four (!) paltry points to 23 last season; clearly, it was a reversion to the mean.

This is likely McAvoy’s ceiling, but it’s also hard to go wrong with him because he’s been so consistent when he plays. However, he has played over 70 games just twice in nine seasons. 

Honorable Mentions: Roman Josi, Nashville Predators; John Carlson, Tampa Bay Lightning; Adam Fox, New York Rangers; Darren Raddysh, Toronto Maple Leafs

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