The Metropolitan Division is absolutely stacked. Seven out of its eight teams have a .500% point percentage or better. This is caused by a balance of elite star power and depth players that seem to go under the radar. In this article, we will select one player from each Metropolitan Division team to highlight as underrated. These players might not be underrated within a team’s fanbase, but are on a league scale due to their style of play. This doesn’t mean they aren’t crucial players to a team’s success, and this will be addressed in our examples.

Carolina Hurricanes: Warren Foegele

The Hurricanes are absolutely loaded with skilled forwards – Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen, Vincent Trocheck, Martin Necas, among others. But the composition of a team’s forward core have to go beyond the first two lines.

Warren Foegele is an excellent depth player, as many Islander fans discovered in the 2018-19 season in the second round when he notched the game-winner in Game 2 in an eventual sweep. Foegle was tremendous all playoffs for Carolina, notching four goals in seven games against the Washington Capitals and exploding for three points in Game 3 alone. While this may not seem eye-boggling at first, playoff hockey is elevated to another level, and Washington were the defending champions at that time.

In addition to clutch performances, Foegele acts as a power forward but still has excellent mobility. In this highlight-reel goal against Washington, Foegele was able to find a burst of speed in the neutral zone and make a hard cut to the net to eventually stuff it past Braden Holtby. While Foegle’s best traits include defense, physicality, and screening goaltenders, plays like this show how complete of a player he truly is. While he is not lighting up the scoreboard constantly, Foegele plays a solid 200-foot game that deserves more recognition as he is a bottom-six forward helping the Hurricanes surge in the Metropolitan Division standings.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Oliver Bjorkstrand

Oliver Bjorkstrand, the 25-year-old out of Columbus, is one of the most underrated players in the entire National Hockey league. While there are holes in everyone’s game, it is difficult to find a glaring problem with Bjorkstrand’s play.

The Blue Jackets aren’t a team with a lot of big names on it, besides Zach Werenski, Seth Jones, and Pierre Luc-Dubois after a disastrous 2019 offseason. Instead, they operate on hard work and strategy under a strict but successful coach, John Tortorella. Bjorkstrand is one of the many Blue Jackets that go under the radar for their complete game.

Bjorkstrand has taken some time to blossom into the player he is today, but the development of players isn’t always going to be rapid. He has blossomed into a stout penalty killer, physical presence, and while doing so, he is putting up good offensive numbers, especially for a team without much offensive talent. He scored 21 goals and totaled 36 points in 49 games this season, which is good for fourth on the team in points despite playing 20 fewer games than the point leaders.

Bjorkstrand has proven to be one of the best offensive, defensive, and complete players in Columbus, and many NHL fans don’t know who he is despite him being a major part of the reason Columbus shocked many teams this year, including making a big presence in the Metropolitan Division race.

New Jersey Devils: MacKenzie Blackwood

MacKenzie Blackwood was one of the beacons of hope in what was a fiasco of a season for the Devils. There are a couple main reasons he is overlooked. First off, he is on a bottom team. Despite most of their wins being carried on his back and most of the losses nowhere near his fault, people may dismiss his goaltending as the outcomes of most Devils games isn’t ideal. Also, the Metropolitan Division has a lot of young goalies who are projected to be stars, such as Ilya Sorokin, Igor Shestyorkin, Elvis Merzlikins, Ilya Samsonov, and Carter Hart. This makes the standards very high for Blackwood, at least relatively speaking.

New Jersey’s defense needs help. P.K. Subban has had a disappointing season, with most of their other defensemen to follow. Other defensemen such as Will Butcher and Damon Severson also disappointed, and there were many games Blackwood was left completely out to dry.

Despite these obstacles, Blackwood managed to post a .915% SV and 2.77 GAA this season. The ratio of save percentage to goals-against average shows how many shots the Devils constantly give up. However, Blackwood is a well-positioned, energetic, and athletic goalie that has brought New Jersey to a fair share of their victories this season. He is a young star goalie, who is in the shadow of an otherwise stacked division and a lackluster defense in front of him.

New York Islanders: Adam Pelech

Despite a rocky start to his career and gaining popularity within the Islanders fanbase and social media, Adam Pelech is still ridiculously underrated on a league scale.

Adam Pelech is a stout, top-pairing defensemen in the National Hockey League. Despite a lack of recognition outside the Island, Pelech is one of the most steady defensemen anyone can ask for. He’s physical, poised, smart, and has excellent ice vision. His stick checking is incredible, as it is difficult to get a clean shot from the slot when Pelech is on the ice due to his abrupt, unexpected poke checks.

Pelech is underrated because he doesn’t light up the scoresheet, but that isn’t really his role. As a general rule, steady stay-at-home defensemen don’t get praised as much as they should in hockey. However, the Islanders entire dynamic and Barry Trotz’s whole defensive system runs on limiting high opportunity scoring chances, which Pelech does in many ways.

When he got injured this season, the difference was certainly felt as the Islanders’ defense wasn’t nearly as structured or confident as before afterward. Another reason defensive defensemen like Pelech are crucial is because they give the rest of the team confidence to make creative plays and not stress positioning as much as before. In fact, the Islanders were 25-10-3 and close to the top of the Metropolitan Division with Pelech in the lineup this season and 10-13-7 without. The Islanders have collected 124 points in their last 90 games with Pelech in the lineup, good for a 113-point pace. This is incredible consistency and it shows Pelech’s true importance to the Islanders’ success.

New York Rangers: Adam Fox

A lot of NHL fans are aware that Adam Fox was one of the better rookies in the National Hockey League this season, but it is not too much of a stretch to call Adam Fox the best defenseman on this new and improved Rangers team that is making a statement in the Metropolitan Division.

To begin, it is much harder for defensemen to develop at the NHL level than forwards. Maintaining defensive responsibilities when playing at a high level is extremely difficult, especially on initial exposure. Fox has played like a veteran, both on the offensive and defensive fronts. In watching him play, it is easy to tell he has gained confidence everywhere on the ice, and in every aspect of his game.

The Rangers rebuild has been quick and excellent. However, like the Lundqvist era, the Rangers don’t have many stay-at-home defensemen on the same level as the other top teams. If you look at the best defenders on the Rangers currently, such as Tony DeAngelo and Jacob Trouba, they are both incredible offensive defensemen but are average on the defensive side.

A blossoming Adam Fox has already proven he can be a stay-at-home defenseman and key offensive contributor. In other words, Fox is easily the most complete player on the Rangers defensive core despite his inexperience. With further development and experience, Fox can be a top-five or top-ten defenseman in the NHL in a couple years. Most fans know Fox is a solid rookie defenseman, but don’t recognize his full potential and what it can look like when maximized.

Philadelphia Flyers: Travis Sanheim

Quietly, the Flyers are loaded team, especially on offense. On the defensive side of things, Shayne Gostisbehere (despite a bad season) and Ivan Provorov are probably the two defenders most fans think of first.

Travis Sanheim also makes a case for being one of Philadelphia’s most solid defensemen. Ever since Coach Alain Vigneault took over the coaching position in Philadelphia at the beginning of this season, Sanheim has emerged into an excellent top-four defensemen.

At 6’3”, Sanheim is a physical player and is seemingly defensively aware at all times. He has 25 points this season, which is good for a young defenseman, his defensive play is what truly makes him underrated. With his ability to box players out, poke check, and have solid overall awareness, Sanheim is quietly a player that can cause a lot of trouble for years to come in this stacked Metropolitan Division.

Pittsburgh Penguins: John Marino

In terms of developing prospects and home-grown talent, the Penguins are gurus. Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, Zach Aston-Reese, Teddy Blueger, Conor Sheary, Marcus Petterson, among others were players not many people heard of or knew about, and are producing positively at the NHL level. Every year, the Penguins seem to bust out a couple “surprise” rookies to keep their 13-year streak of making the playoffs going. This year it’s John Marino.

Marino was originally drafted by the Oilers in the sixth round and played three seasons at Harvard University before joining the Penguins this season. He was solid at Harvard, but is actually producing more and has been more noticeable at the NHL level. That goes to show how incredible the Penguins are at developing prospects, even if they weren’t supposed to be anything special.

Marino has 26 points and a +17 rating this season, and has quietly been one of the best rookie defensemen in the league this season with Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, Adam Fox, and his own teammate Marcus Petterson.

The rookie defenseman has gotten power-play time, has a reliable defensive stick, and players like him coming in are a large part of the reason the Penguins are a top team in the Metropolitan Division year after year after year.

Washington Capitals: Lars Eller

Last but not least, we have Lars Eller of the Washington Capitals who is one of the best fourth-line centers in the game. Washington is obviously loaded, with talents like Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, John Carlson, Braden Holtby, Dmitry Orlov, Ilya Kovalchuk, TJ Oshie, and Jakub Vrana. As a result, Eller’s game can go under the radar.

To begin, the primary story of the Capitals winning the Stanley Cup in 2018 was obviously Alex Ovechkin getting to win the Cup for the first time in his career. “The Save” was also very popular in Game Two, as Braden Holtby reached his stick out in complete desperation to rob Alex Tuch and potentially change the momentum of the series. However, people tend to forget Eller scored the game-winning goal in Game Five, which was when the Capitals clinched their first Stanley Cup. His rebound goal on Marc-Andre Fleury created history. Scoring the game-winner for a franchise’s first Stanley cup is quite the accomplishment, despite being overshadowed by other stories at the time.

To this day, Eller is still a solid defensive forward and fourth-line center. He kills penalties, wins faceoffs, and has produced 39 points in 69 games, astronomical for a third-line player. He is an excellent veteran presence who scored the most important goal in Capitals history and is still playing superb hockey in the nation’s capital. The Capitals are towards the top, or at the top, of the Metropolitan Division standings, and he is part of the reason why.