Breaking down the NHL’s best and worst first lines this season (2024)

A dominant top line is one of the most important boxes to check if your team has serious championship aspirations.

The last decade of Stanley Cup winners proves it — Tampa Bay (Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov), Washington (Alex Ovechkin), Pittsburgh (Sidney Crosby), Chicago (Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane) and Los Angeles (Anze Kopitar) were all led by star forwards driving elite results at the top of the lineup. And even if you don’t consider Ryan O’Reilly a superstar for the 2019 Cup-winning Blues, he was still driving superstar-like numbers for St. Louis’ first line which was outscoring opponents nearly two to one in 2018-19.

Bearing this in mind, it seems worthwhile to analyze all 32 NHL teams’ first lines and see how they stack up compared to each other. Which first lines are dominating and which ones are significantly lagging?

Before we dive in, it’s important to lay out our criteria for defining each team’s top line. I’m going to follow the same methodology as last season: We’ll identify the No.1 forward in average five-on-five ice-time as a proxy for the first line and then analyze the on-ice results. If that forward has missed a crucial chunk of games, he’ll be substituted for his linemate (eg: Mikko Rantanen for Nathan MacKinnon).

The only exceptions to this proxy criteria will be when the ice-time is nearly the same but there’s a more appropriate choice for the top-line designation. That applies to teams like Seattle (Jordan Eberle instead of Alex Wennberg) and Vancouver (J.T. Miller instead of Bo Horvat).

For measuring performance, we’ll begin by looking at the goals for and against differential when that first line takes the ice at five-on-five. As an example, it means that we’re looking at how many goals Edmonton scores and how many it allows with Connor McDavid on the ice at even-strength. We’re using that as our measure instead of something like points because points can’t account for defense. Here are the numbers so far this season, sorted by the best goal differential rate.

When I did this exercise last season, there was a really strong correlation where many teams with productive first lines were also near the top of the standings. That correlation isn’t as strong this season, though it’s worth mentioning that some elite teams like Tampa Bay and Vegas have had injuries to their best forwards. On the flip side, however, you can clearly see that teams struggling to produce at the top of the lineup are also in the basem*nt of the standings. Every single one of the six worst teams on this table is also bottom-10 standings-wise.

In dissecting the individual teams, Calgary jumps off the page. The Flames’ top line is NHL-best both offensively and defensively — a very rare combination. Johnny Gaudreau’s line has scored 43 goals and conceded just 11 — it’s completely bonkers, a pace that we haven’t seen from a top-line in a very long time. Given this, it’s no surprise that Gaudreau is in line to crack a three-figure points mark for the first time in his career and why Matthew Tkachuk is on pace for a 42-goal, 93 point campaign as well.

Colorado and Washington shouldn’t come as surprises in the top five considering the star talent each club possesses. I don’t think anyone would have expected San Jose and Dallas to rank this high before the season started but both are hanging around in the playoff race on the back of breakout performances from budding elite power forwards (Timo Meier for San Jose and Jason Robertson for Dallas). Both are essentially one-line teams with the Stars really suffering from the fact that Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin are in the midst of steep decline — both are on pace for fewer than 40 points this season.

No. 6 and No. 7 on this list belong to Minnesota and Carolina. Both teams had a desperate need for elite forwards just a few seasons ago which has been satiated. Kirill Kaprizov is proving he’s worth every penny and more of the massive contract he signed last summer, scoring at a 108-point pace. He’s helped unlock the best from Mats Zuccarello. Zuccarello’s never really profiled as a top-of-the-lineup producer — his career-high is just 61 points — but he’s on pace for 97 points. That duo has been so dynamite that it’s diminished the once glaring need Minnesota had for a top-line center.

Carolina, meanwhile, has one of the most impressive top-nine groups in the NHL. They practically have a Line 1A and 1B that plays very similar minutes, one led by Sebastian Aho and the other by Andrei Svechnikov; both players are capable of taking games over singlehandedly. Metro Division defenders will fear the Canes for a long time with Aho (24), Svechnikov (21) Teuvo Teravainen (27), Martin Necas (23) and Seth Jarvis (19) all in the fold for years to come.

The Senators have underperformed at a team level this season but they can take solace in the fact that some of their best young players have hit a new level. That movement has been led by Drake Batherson who’s comfortably cresting the point-per-game mark. Is this sustainable and has Ottawa found a contender quality top line to build around or will these youngsters fall back down to Earth a little bit? More on that in the next section.

Rounding out the top-10 is the Panthers. Top-10 is a very good range to be in but I was surprised they weren’t higher considering they’ve been one of the NHL’s most unstoppable offenses. Aleksander Barkov’s line has been excellent but a closer look tells us that the Panthers are getting elite contributions up-and-down the entire lineup. That includes Florida’s second line trio of Jonathan Huberdeau-Sam Bennett-Anthony Duclair which has scored 15 goals and allowed just three at five-on-five.

For Pittsburgh, the Sidney Crosby-Jake Guentzel duo continues to dominate; they’ve outscored opponents 22-12 in over 350 five-on-five minutes together. Both players ironically fly a little bit under the radar these days when we discuss some of the best players in the league. Guentzel isn’t just an excellent complementary top-line player — he’s one of the best goal-scoring wingers in the NHL — and Crosby’s scored 32 points in his last 23 games after needing a few games to get back up to speed from a wrist injury that forced him to miss the start of the season.

The Ducks are finally seeing the new guard start to take over. Trevor Zegras has scored at a 66-point pace at just 20. That’s impressive enough on its own, but Zegras has also driven play at a precocious level. The offense usually comes first and the complete two-way play-driving can sometimes take time to develop for blue-chip offensive prospects but Zegas has controlled an impressive 53.6 percent share of expected goals during his minutes.

Next up, you might raise an eyebrow seeing Tampa Bay only slightly above league average but there’s an explanation for it. Point and Kucherov have each missed significant chunks of the season — so we can’t use them as proxies — after which we’ve had to use Anthony Cirelli. This means that Tampa Bay’s number is honestly more a reflection of its second line, which has performed very well considering it’s outproducing many top lines around the league. Cirelli had a bit of a down season in 2021 after generating some Selke Trophy buzz two years ago, but he’s bounced back admirably. That line’s best performer, however, has probably been Alex Killorn. Killorn’s on pace for 75 points in addition to owning a sparkling two-way profile. The Lightning might have lost the third line that made them so special, but they’ve still got two lines in the top-six that can blow you out of the water.

Beneath Tampa, the Red Wings and Predators clock in at a very respectable rate. Detroit’s been a pleasant surprise even if it likely won’t make the playoffs this year. The accelerated improvement has come in large part because of Lucas Raymond’s arrival and the impact it’s had on the club’s top line. Raymond’s been an instant hit but Tyler Bertuzzi and Dylan Larkin have both unlocked a new gear; the latter two are both a point-per-game and scoring at a 40-goal pace.

Many thought this season might represent the beginning of the end for the Predators but they’ve continued humming along quite nicely. Nashville’s hung around well in large part due to a resurgent season from Matt duch*ene. duch*ene scored just 13 points in 34 games last season but he’s rebounded with 21 goals and 40 points in 41 games this year.

The Blues are intriguing, as their first line ranks only 19th in goal differential. It frankly doesn’t matter for St. Louis because the likes of Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, Vladimir Tarasenko and Pavel Buchnevich have been outstanding in other parts of the lineup — few teams boast that kind of top-nine depth. For the Blues to make another deep Cup run, however, I think they’ll eventually need the O’Reilly line to return to the dominant force it was during the last championship run.

O’Reilly’s offensive numbers have dipped but I think the bigger impact has been felt from a two-way perspective. In the 2018-19 Cup-winning season, O’Reilly’s line outscored opponents by 24 at five-on-five. This season, O’Reilly’s line is only plus two. A deeper look beneath the surface reveals that he’s not controlling defensive play as well as he was in his Selke Trophy-winning campaign. In fact, there’s been a gradual dip in his two-way form over the past couple of seasons.

O’Reilly’s allowed fewer than two goals against per hour in every season as a Blue up until this one where the goals against rate has ballooned to 2.46. In his first couple seasons in St. Louis, O’Reilly was practically Patrice Bergeron 2.0 — he dominated possession, scoring chances and goals at both ends of the ice. That impact has slipped to the point where the Blues are getting outshot and outchanced with O’Reilly on the ice and the advantage in terms of actual goal differential is much slimmer than it used to be.

Buffalo clocks in at 22nd which is modestly better than I think a lot of us would have expected after an offseason where the club lost Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart. Tage Thompson’s breakout has been instrumental in that. He’s been shifted to center and seems to have found the right fit where he’s allowed to just express his offensive game as opposed to maybe before when people would look at his 6-foot-7 frame and expect him to play a more abrasive, physical style that wasn’t in his nature.

The Canucks are lower on this list than most of the team’s fans would have hoped for. They were among the NHL’s leaders in this category in 2019-20 when the Lotto Line (J.T. Miller-Elias Pettersson-Brock Boeser) was an elite driver. This is the second year in a row where Vancouver’s disappointed on a ranking like this despite owning high-end forwards. Most of that responsibility falls on Elias Pettersson who’s scored just 24 points in 43 games, although he’s shown signs of potentially breaking out recently with five goals in his last six games.

Winnipeg’s a disappointment at 26th. It’s not that Mark Scheifele’s line can’t create enough offensively, they just give up way too much back defensively (3.21 goals against per hour). That will show in the next section too where that line’s expected goals against rate is league-worst among first-lines and reflect just as poorly as the actual goals against numbers.

There aren’t a lot of surprises at the bottom of the list. Seattle and Arizona just don’t have enough high-end talent. There wasn’t really a proper proxy for the Devils’ first line because Jack Hughes has missed so much time with injury. They’re in a similar spot as Tampa where we’re essentially looking at their second line’s results — the Devils will surely rocket up this ranking in years to come, especially with the type of breakout we’re seeing from Hughes now.

Goal differential drives wins and losses so it’s by far the most important way of measuring a line’s even-strength success. But in small sample sizes like half a season, luck and bounces can dramatically influence results. This is where we can lean on an expected goals model for a sanity check. This analyzes the quality of chances generated for and against and calculates how much on-ice production there should be assuming league average finishing.

Expected goal models are a much better measure at an overall team level than first lines because elite players are so skilled that they can very easily outperform the expected numbers, so obviously take these results with a grain of salt. I don’t put a ton of stock into these numbers at individual line levels — you have to be careful about how you interpret things because they can’t account for passing/pre-shot movement — but it’s helpful for situations where there are massive discrepancies between process (expected goals) and results (actual goals).

I’ve also included each line’s PDO as another reference point. PDO is the sum of a team’s shooting clip and save percentage. PDO typically normalizes to around 100 range over large samples at a team level but since we’re looking at first lines that can finish at an above-average clip, it’s not unusual for some lines to maintain a PDO a tick or two above 100.

Toronto’s top line has underperformed in terms of goal differential. When you look under the hood though, it’s abundantly clear that it’s mostly a matter of bad luck. Auston Matthews’ line has dominated possession and high danger looks — controlling nearly 62 percent of five-on-five scoring chances per Natural Stattrick. Matthews’ line is actually scoring its fair share offensively at 2.85 goals per hour, they’re just not getting saves at the same rate as they usually do.

Matthews is conceding quality chances at the lowest rate of his career. In the two years before this, his expected and actual goals were nearly perfectly aligned, this year there’s a significant difference — that’s usually a sign that something’s up. That “something” can be traced back to the fact that Leafs’ goaltenders have been below .900 with Toronto’s top line on the ice when they’re usually in the .920 range. Once that reverses, Toronto’s top line will be back dominating in terms of actual goal differential like it usually has.

Edmonton’s a similar example of being unlucky. The Oilers have the best player in the world and yet their goal differential was middle of the pack in the first chart. McDavid’s creating even-strength shots and quality chances at the best rate of his career but because of some poor luck finishing wise (just a 7.3 percent on-ice shooting clip), his line’s scoring less than three goals per hour at five-on-five for the first time in his NHL career. When McDavid’s line is piling up five-on-five chances at a career-best rate but finishing actual goals at a career-worst rate, you can bet it’s just tough luck that will turn soon.

Chicago’s in a similar boat in terms of misfortune though not quite to the same extent. The Blackhawks’ top line isn’t controlling play by expected goals very well but that’s never stopped Patrick Kane in the past from helping his line outscore opponents– he’s one of the special playmakers who can consistently outperform these models. Kane and the Hawks’ top line has suffered this year though. Some of that is due to Kane’s even-strength play-driving continuing to slip. Most of it derives from the fact that his line is converting shots at a sub-7 percent clip when it’s usually been in the 10-11.5 percent range in the three seasons before this one.

Boston’s also looked better through this expected goals lens than the actual goal differential in the first chart. Considering how talented David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand are as finishers, you can bet that’s just a sign of a tad bit of misfortune that should improve.

Los Angeles, led by Anze Kopitar, has deserved a better fate too.

Elsewhere, Calgary’s top line is legitimate. They’re dominating offensive zone time and piling up the chances, but that dominance has been aided by Flames goalies giving them .959 goaltending when they’ve stepped on the ice. In other words, expect Gaudreau’s line to continue doing special things offensively but it’s obviously unrealistic to expect them to continue allowing barely a goal against per hour defensively.

Dallas and San Jose also quite clearly aren’t flukes for landing that high on the first chart. Meier and Robertson (with the help of Joe Pavelski) aren’t just excellent scorers, they’re also play-driving beasts.

Ottawa’s young guns are also worth watching. They’re only middle of the pack in controlling play and unlike say the Capitals, they’ve yet to prove they’re a trio that can consistently outperform expected goal models. In light of this, it’ll be interesting to see if Josh Norris, Batherson and Brady Tkachuk slow down at all.

All stats as of end of day, January 27.

(Top photo of Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk: Joel Auerbach / Getty Images)