Every year, I inflict upon myself the task of ranking the top 20 players at each position, a thankless task but a fun exercise nonetheless. To do this, I don't just go by points or wins above replacement or any one metric, but by trying to consider a player's contributions holistically.

While we may not be blessed with the uber-detailed stats at the disposal of NHL front offices, we humble members of the public have a lot more resources than many people are aware of, and I use all of them that are available. That includes TopDownHockey's wins above replacement model and Corey Sznajder's manually-tracked microstats. These metrics combined allow us to get a good picture of what the players contribute and how they contribute. They and are invaluable for this kind of analysis.

In the first part of the series, I started things off with the left wings, a historically undervalued position that had plenty of headline stars this year. In the second part, I ranked the right wings. Today, it's the big one: centres.