Stanley Cup Checklist 2.0: Analyzing the rosters of the last 15 NHL champions (2025)

There’s no exact formula for winning the Stanley Cup, but there are common elements between champions. That was the vision behind the Cup Checklist introduced five years ago. Now it’s time for an update.

The vision this time? Accounting for roles.

While a checklist that breaks down the thresholds previous Cup winners hit at certain positions is good practice, two problems arose.

The first is comparing the wrong players due to position rigidity. Nikita Kucherov was the best forward on the two Lightning championship teams and should probably be compared to other Cup-winning best players, not just the best wingers.

The second is looking only at total value and then comparing the wrong values. Some players provide one-dimensional offense, some are shutdown forces, and some are complete, 200-foot players. Those distinctions matter when finding the right pieces for a Stanley Cup contender.

With the introduction of Offensive and Defensive Rating in 2023 and the necessary usage adjustments made in 2024, the distinctions that matter are also easier to spot. It’s what made this update necessary, with five extra seasons of data to boot.

The new Cup Checklist focuses on role more than position and looks at the appropriate values that define that role. It also looks at each item on the checklist with a five-point scale, allowing for a bit more nuance if a team is stronger or weaker in one role compared to another.

Here’s how that works.

Luxury (>90%): A player in the top 10 percent of his role relative to other Cup winners. Someone who brings an exceptional amount of value that allows a team some significant slack in other areas. Or, it’s the kind of difference-maker who puts a team over the top.

Ideal (70-90%): A player who is above average for his role relative to other Cup winners. This is where champions find sources of strength on their roster. They’re players to lean on who add more to their role than expected, making up for some weaknesses elsewhere.

Solid (30-70%): A player right in the middle of the range of other Cup winners. Nothing fancy here, just the average expectation with a fair bit of leeway above and below the mean.

Passable (10-30%): A player who is below average for his role relative to other Cup winners. It’s not ideal, but teams have still won with a player at this level. It’s a potential weakness that should be countered with a source of strength elsewhere.

Exception (<10%): A player in the bottom 10 percent of his role relative to other Cup winners. Essentially, they’re the ‘exception to the rule.’ It’s not that a team can’t win with an exception to the rule (some already have!), it just means that player has to play above his means when it matters, or the team has to make up ground elsewhere. It’s a potential liability that could be the team’s downfall. On the more hopeful side, it’s where a team needs a playoff breakthrough. The postseason is where legends are born and a lot of great stories start here: with a player who went above and beyond expectations.

As always, none of this is meant to be a hard-and-fast rule. But previous patterns can help show us which teams are currently built best to win — and which ones have their work cut out for them.

Here’s the new Cup Checklist, separated into three cores: elite, support and depth. There are 13 roles to fill; for the ‘too long, didn’t read’ crowd, here’s a chart summarizing those roles and where each threshold lies. All values are normalized to six goals per win to account for different scoring environments over the last 15 years.

Elite Core

Franchise Forward

The most obvious piece needed is an elite forward: ideally, one who can play at an MVP-caliber level. Usually, this is a team’s top-line center — Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Nathan MacKinnon — but sometimes it’s a winger. Kucherov was the most important forward in Tampa Bay’s back-to-back wins and looks right at home here, sandwiched between Crosby and Toews. Alex Ovechkin in 2018 also grades out well.

One key here: two-way play. While Ovechkin is the exception to the rule, every other player had an above-average Defensive Rating, with the majority at least clearing a 2.0 rating. On average, teams are looking for a plus-14.0/plus-2.5 split between Offensive and Defensive Ratings, but any Net Rating above 15 is usually good to go.

There are also two ‘types’ of players here who can inform the rest of the lineup. Column A is Hart Trophy-caliber offensive studs: Crosby, Kucherov, MacKinnon, Ovechkin. Column B is Selke Trophy-caliber two-way studs: Aleksander Barkov, Toews, Anze Kopitar, Ryan O’Reilly. Both are valid avenues.

As for the lack of luxury forwards, think Crosby and Connor McDavid in their primes. Crosby, as great as he still was when he won, wasn’t quite at the level of his 2007-2013 self.

Star Forward

If the franchise forward is usually the team’s best offensive weapon, there’s usually a star forward behind him to help. Toews had Patrick Kane, Crosby had Evgeni Malkin and MacKinnon had Mikko Rantanen. Every team has a Robin for their Batman.

That means a player whose Offensive Rating is, on average, north of plus-12, but anything above plus-10 works. For these guys, defense is important, but it is less of a priority. That’s usually because a lot of these players are wingers, or the centers of a scoring line rather than a shutdown line. On average, their Defensive Rating is plus-0.9. Still good, but it does pale in comparison to the franchise and shutdown forwards.

Here, creating offense is the primary source of value. The franchise forward needs a sidekick whose motive is attacking.

The exception to the rule: The Golden Knights were tricky to fit. They’re the only team for which I decided to not put the best player (according to the model, anyway) in the franchise spot. It just didn’t work with Jack Eichel and Mark Stone flipped for anyone who knows hockey. Either way, it also left an awkward fit in the star forward category. Chandler Stephenson’s projected Offensive Rating that year was plus-6.2. That’s a strong mark, sure, but one that doesn’t quite compare to the Kanes and Brayden Points of the world. To Stephenson’s credit, he was second on the team in points with 65 and was close to a point-per-game player in the playoffs. But there’s a reason he graded out a little lower than the rest. With how good Eichel was with Jonathan Marchessault in the playoffs though, it didn’t matter. A deep team can find new players to fit the necessary roles, which allowed Stephenson to take a back seat toward the support core instead.

Franchise Defenseman

Just as important as the franchise forward is the franchise defenseman. Almost every Stanley Cup champion had a leader on the back end, someone they could lean on in any situation all over the ice. These were minute-eating 200-foot players who could do it all with few exceptions. Even Justin Schultz, taking over for Kris Letang, was rocking a plus-8.5 Net Rating in 2017. That’s the bar, at the very least, and it’s a necessary one to clear as it’s very difficult to win without that kind of player.

That’s notable at both ends of the ice where the average Offensive and Defensive Rating split is plus-9.2/plus-2.1, but something closer to plus-7.5/plus-1.0 can also work. It’s not just that the team’s best defenseman has to be good — they also have to be multi-dimensional forces. Cale Makar is a luxury in that vein, but it applies all the same to Victor Hedman, Duncan Keith, Drew Doughty, Alex Pietrangelo, Zdeno Chara and Kris Letang. Those teams won because their best defenseman was also one of the best defensemen in the world.

They could score, they could defend, they could move the puck, they could drive play, they could push the pace. They were everything.

The exception to the rule: If there’s any exception here, it has to be Schultz. Offensively, he certainly filled in well enough in Letang’s absence. But his minus-1.0 Defensive Rating is telling to the player he was — even at his very best. The Penguins managed, and one other team also won with a below-average defender as their No. 1, but doing so is still playing with fire. Schultz’s 2.66 xGA/60 during the playoffs in 2017 was the worst among Penguins defensemen.

Shutdown Forward

Like the franchise defenseman, it’s necessary to view the team’s shutdown forward at both ends of the ice. Locking down the opposition’s best is the main job, but they have to deliver some semblance of offense, too.

While this may feel like an odd category given a lot of teams’ franchise forwards are usually also their top defensive guys, it makes some sense in conjunction with the star forward. Both are usually sidekicks, with opposing leans toward offense (the star) and defense (the shutdown-er).

Point and Anthony Cirelli are both important pieces around Kucherov. Kane and Marian Hossa are both important pieces around Toews. Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart are both important pieces around Barkov. It’s a big three and pretty much every championship team has had one.

The goal here is a plus-8.0/plus-2.5 split for Offensive and Defensive Ratings — essentially a player in the 90th percentile league-wide at both ends of the ice. A plus-6.0/plus-2.0 split also works.

How good a shutdown forward needs to be depends on how good the top two forwards are above him, or how strong the back end is. But it’s their strength that can really help put a team over the top. They help anchor the forward group.

That’s either by forming a shutdown line with the franchise forward and allowing the star to dominate (Chicago, Florida) or by soaking up tough minutes on the second line, allowing for an offensively focused top line (Tampa Bay, Washington). Both strategies work.

The exception to the rule: There aren’t many. Almost every team had a player whose splits were at least plus-4.0/plus-1.5 — a very good two-way forward. By total Net Rating, only two players were below plus-7.5. The one exception might be the 2021 version of Cirelli. He thrust himself into the Selke conversation in 2020, but 2021 was a down year by his standards with the Lightning earning just 46 percent of goals in his minutes. He made up for it, though, with a vintage performance come playoff time when he was the two-way force we expect him to be.

Star Goalie

Goalies are goalies. You can plan for them to be as good as possible, but in the small sample world of the playoffs, anything can happen.

Still, a true starter lowers the margin for error. The higher the baseline, the more dependable a goalie is to deliver as expected. The average Cup-winning starter was projected to save 7.7 goals above expected per 82 games and the list is littered with guys you can count on. Having a superstar — like Andrei Vasilevskiy or Jonathan Quick — really helps, especially if they catch fire when it matters.

The exception to the rule: It’s not that Adin Hill was necessarily an average goalie in 2023, it’s just that he didn’t have a large body of work. His light resume made him less of a safe bet. That season, though, Hill did save 7.5 goals above expected in 27 games and looked to be Vegas’ best goalie option. It was a complete reversal from his career to date, over which he allowed 8.3 goals above expected in 74 contests. All Vegas needed was Hill to keep up what he did in 2022-23 — no regression. That’s exactly what the Golden Knights got, and more: a .930 save percentage in which Hill saved 13 goals above expected in 16 games.

Support Core

Scoring Forward

The best teams have serious firepower. That’s where the scoring forward comes in: as another weapon. It can’t just be on the team’s top-scoring duo to deliver — they need a third and fourth legit top-line threat to help out.

Scoring Defenseman

Offense from the blue line matters — it can’t just come from one source. Every past champion had at least one defender after the franchise guy who delivered above-average offense, with the majority having an Offensive Rating above plus-3.0. That doesn’t have to mean a defenseman who scores points, it just means someone who can help create and add pressure up ice. Offense is a numbers game and it helps to have a defender who can join the fun.

Mikhail Sergachev is a perfect example of this archetype, especially because the Lightning used him on the third pair. Having a guy of this caliber crushing sheltered minutes is a huge luxury, one only afforded by having other key pieces playing at a high level. The Blues also had this with Vince Dunn in 2019. Usually, though, this type of player is on the second pair, balanced by a defensive defender on the other side.

While offense is the name of the game here, defensive responsibility also matters. The majority of scoring defensemen carried an above-average Defensive Rating, with an average of plus-0.4. This is a No. 2 or 3 defender who shouldn’t be one-dimensional. After all, they’ll usually have some shutdown responsibilities in the top four.

The exception to the rule: Bowen Byram sticks out here, but anyone who remembers the 2022 playoffs knows how much of an offensive force he was. He stepped up after Samuel Girard’s injury, looking like a future offensive force from the back end. Byram was one of Colorado’s most valuable players during that run, scoring nine points in 20 games while tilting the ice heavily at five-on-five. The 3.99 goals per 60 the Avalanche scored with Byram on the ice was on par with their numbers with Makar.

Shutdown Defenseman

The goal of this Cup Checklist refresh is to highlight that the shutdown defenseman is particularly key. This player type — whether he’s No. 2 or 3 on the depth chart — is present on almost every Stanley Cup champion. Accounting for that is crucial in a list of roster pieces necessary to win.

Niklas Hjalmarsson, Colton Parayko, Ryan McDonagh — they’re key cogs to a champion. Given how strong opposing playoff teams are offensively, teams need two pairs that can handle the heat. The franchise defenseman does his part on one pair and the shutdown defenseman usually does his part on another. There are certainly instances when they man the same pair (like Toews with Makar), but spreading the wealth defensively in the top four is helpful. Keith and Hjalmarsson, Pietrangelo and Parayko, Hedman and McDonagh — you get the picture.

The playoffs are loaded with some of the league’s best offensive stars. Having a shutdown defender capable of stopping them in their tracks is vital. Also important is a team not stifling its own offense in the process. What’s sometimes missed about the league’s best shutdown defensemen is that they’re not usually offensive black holes. The majority listed here are above average and Hjalmarsson, who makes up for it by being one of the best shutdown defensemen, is the only one below a minus-1.0 Offensive Rating.

That small detail is usually what separates the best shutdown defenders from other regular defensive defenders lower in the lineup. Considering how often they play with a team’s top two lines, being offensively capable is necessary. The average Defensive Rating of plus-4.4 is the selling point here (and anything above 2.5 is worthwhile), but the average Offensive Rating is also plus-0.9. They’re not one-dimensional and that’s an important distinction.

The exception to the rule: It’s still a bit mystifying that the Penguins won it all in 2017 without Letang. They are the only below-average defensive team to win the Cup, and having Ron Hainsey as one of the better defensive options is a testament to that. And yet they made it work and Hainsey was a big part of that. Hainsey was one of their most used defenders and allowed just 2.02 xGA/60 in tough minutes. That was the best mark on the team alongside partner Brian Dumoulin.

Support Forward

You know exactly who this forward is. He’s not the most valuable, he’s not the most dynamic, he’s not the most responsible and he’s not the most productive. What he often is, however, is the engine. He’s the elite grinder who can play two-way hockey, forechecks hard and does the little things well. He’s the guy who makes life easier for teammates — and sometimes hell for opponents.

The names above make sense in that vein: Valeri Nichushkin, Brandon Saad, Sam Bennett, Chris Kunitz, Ondrej Palat, Andrew Ladd, Dustin Brown, Brad Marchand. These guys all filled a similar niche on their championship teams, providing a strong mix of offense and defense and usually adding some edge. That last part is vital, and though it’s not explicitly measured by Net Rating, I do think it shows in these players’ ability to drive play. It leads to a player that usually delivers over four goals of value.

The exception to the rule: Before Marchand was the admirable rat king we love to hate, he was a rookie on the rise who had just put up a 20-20 campaign, still learning the defensive ropes. Marchand’s defensive game in his rookie season was below average and he wasn’t much of a scorer yet — but in the playoffs, he came alive. In 25 games en route to the Cup, Marchand scored 11 goals and 19 points while earning a 54 percent xG rate. The Bruins outscored opponents 19-9 with Marchand on the ice as he continued the chemistry he was building with Patrice Bergeron during the season’s second half. The rest is history.

Depth Core

Offensive Forward

When the games get tighter, depth scoring becomes critical. The average Cup champion had 6.7 above-average offensive forwards, with the majority having at least seven. That seventh forward who can deliver above-average offense is the ultimate luxury. It allows teams to spread enough offense through the top three lines. Phil Kessel is the perfect example of that as a top-six scorer in an advantageous role. Reilly Smith’s 14 points in 22 playoff games in 2023 for Vegas is another.

Here, strong defense isn’t required — especially if the rest of the team is up to par. The best teams can get away with a one-dimensional scorer. While the average Offensive Rating for these types is plus-1.9, the average Defensive Rating is minus-0.5, with the majority below average. And given how much emphasis there is defensively elsewhere, it’s an acceptable trade-off.

The exception to the rule: The 2012 Kings were a defensive powerhouse. Rather than supplement that with offense down the lineup, their depth doubled down defensively. The Kings, in both 2012 and 2014, were the only team with fewer than six above-average offensive forwards. But that’s OK if someone like Dwight King makes up for it defensively. His plus-1.2 Defensive Rating is the luxury here, making up for his below-average offense.

Defensive Defenseman

The shutdown pair is a key part of any Cup champion and the team’s No. 4 generally plays an important role in locking things down. A shutdown pair is only as strong as its weakest link — it pays to have two guys a team can lean on defensively.

For contenders, at least three members of the top four should be above-average defenders. Only two champions — the 2017 Penguins and 2022 Avalanche — didn’t have that, but they had more than enough firepower to manage. It’s even more beneficial if that trio’s defense is a significant strength. Chicago having Keith, Hjalmarsson and Johnny Oduya is the blueprint and Oduya’s value shows up clearly here.

A plus-2.0 Defensive Rating is the goal, but anything above 1.0 is solid.

The exception to the rule: The model wasn’t a fan of Josh Manson’s defensive game relative to his reputation when the Avalanche acquired him in 2022. The model was wrong: He fit perfectly. In the playoffs that season, the Avalanche gave up just 1.74 xGA/60 with Manson on the ice, a big improvement over his 2.44 rate during the season. Manson was a rock.

Depth Forward

At the very least, we’re looking for an above-average third-line forward here to beef up the top nine. The Lightning looked extremely deep with Yanni Gourde manning this role, but being just an average forward is enough, as that’s already above what most teams trot out on their third line.

Usually strong defense is a prerequisite here, as 11 of 15 teams had an above-average Defensive Rating. But I wanted to leave some wiggle room for teams with a great top-nine forward who was more offensively inclined. That’s where Gourde’s status as a luxury in 2021 really shines. Yes, he was a shutdown force for the Lightning that year, but his ability to also drive offense helped.

The exception to the rule: One of the reasons the Capitals were overlooked a little in 2018 was their depth. Brett Connolly, their eighth-best forward based on Net Rating, didn’t grade out well relative to other top-nine staples from past champions. He played a key role in the team’s championship run, scoring 1.93 points per 60, fifth on the team. His timely scoring provided a big boost and the Capitals won their minutes with Connolly on the ice — something they didn’t do during the season.

Defensive Forward

Last but not least is a defensive specialist. Teams usually have their true shutdown center in the top six along with a sidekick, but it also helps to have a defensive focal point to patrol the bottom six. Marcus Kruger and Jarret Stoll are prime examples of that during the Blackhawks’ and Kings’ Cup runs. It’s the classic checking line staple. The goal is a Defensive Rating of plus-1.0 where offense is secondary. It’s an acceptable trade-off in this slot come playoff time.

The exception to the rule: Lars Eller was a terrific defensive player in his prime, whether the model recognizes it or not. That season was Eller’s “worst” though, thanks to a career-worst 2.7 xGA/60 allowed that was one of the lesser marks on the Capitals. Thankfully, he locked in for the playoffs, surrendering just 2.27 xGA/60. That improvement was vital to Washington’s Cup win.

How past Cup winners stack up in total

One last thing: How this all adds up. First, a summary of the above.

Of the 15 teams here, 14 had a solid piece or better half the time and only two teams had more than one “exception to the rule.” The last six champions have been especially strong by this rubric, with the Avalanche and Panthers hitting “ideal” or better 69 percent of the time.

While the Cup Checklist focuses on individual pieces, it’s also informative to see how those pieces came together (and to account for the pieces that aren’t part of the list). Here’s how the last 15 Stanley Cup champions look according to their total Offensive and Defensive Ratings.

Almost every team is strong at both ends of the ice; nine of 15 champions have at least a plus-20 Offensive and Defensive Rating. When it’s all said and done, the final product should at least hit those benchmarks to be considered a contender. And on average, the number at both ends is even higher.

As for the teams that lacked in one area, many were at least well-equipped in the other. The 2012 and 2014 Kings and the 2017 Penguins are prime examples of that. One-dimensional? Absolutely. But what a dimension it was — enough to win it all.

In all, just two teams — the 2011 Bruins and 2018 Capitals — won with a Net Rating lower than plus-40.

All of this is to say that these are guidelines and benchmarks, not rules and regulations. A team doesn’t have to have every single piece playing at a certain level, nor does it have to reach a certain overall rating to win. But it is telling that many champions over the past 15 years do.

The best teams, the ones that have gone all the way, have mostly followed a similar script up and down the lineup. It’s not impossible to win in other ways, but the path that has already been forged by others is probably worth following.

It’s tried and true — the Cup Checklist helps to outline it.

Data via Evolving Hockey and Hockey Stat Cards

(Photo of Aleksander Barkov lifting the Stanley Cup: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)