2025-26 Fantasy Hockey Consensus Forward Rankings

Forwards make up the majority of a fantasy hockey roster and provide the most fantasy points in the vast majority of leagues. With them being the highest scorers, they often take up most of the early round picks in a draft, especially in the first round. Typically, you want to take the safer reliable forwards in the early rounds, then try to find the gems that will break out later on. With that in mind, we got our team together and hashed out our consensus fantasy hockey forward rankings for the 2025-26 NHL season.

Unanimously, we have Connor McDavid as the top-ranked forward. Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon have been the top two scorers in each of the past two seasons. However, McDavid has the highest ceiling, and it’s very difficult to pass on him if you have the 1st overall pick. Along with this trio, Leon Draisaitl, Auston Matthews, and Kirill Kaprizov are the only players to receive a top 5 position by any of our rankers.

The next tier of forwards consists of David Pastrnak, Mikko Rantanen, Jack Eichel, Brady Tkachuk, Kyle Connor, and Jack Hughes. Things start to open up beyond them, with there being a good amount of variance in the rankings. All the more reason a consensus ranking can be helpful, so that you don’t get too high or too low on a player.

Alex Ovechkin, Elias Pettersson, Martin Necas, and John Tavares are some examples of players you can find after the first few rounds of a draft, who have very different expectations from our writers. Another tricky aspect to decide is when it’s worth drafting players who will miss some time with injury. Aleksander Barkov will likely miss the entire season; meanwhile, Matthew Tkachuk and Zach Hyman won’t miss as much time but will still be on the shelf for a good while.

We hope you find these forward rankings useful in preparing for your draft!

Meet the Rankers

In order to conserve space, the table below uses the initials of the analysts. They are as follows:

BA = Brandon Altomonte – @Brandon_Alto

LD = Logan Doyle

RC = Rob Couch – @RobCouch555

SL = Spencer Lazary – @SpencerLazary23

Also check out our Goalie Rankings and Defensemen Rankings!

Fantasy Hockey Forward Rankings for 2025-26

The Forward Rankings below are based on the following scoring categories: Goals, Assists, Shots on Goal, Power Play Points, Plus/Minus, and Hits.