With the holiday season in full swing, and 2023 quickly approaching, it’s time to take a look back at the year that was, and see who the best players of the calendar year were. We witnessed some incredible performances over the course of the second half of the 2021-22 regular season, the 2022 playoffs, and the 2022-23 regular season so far, but only the best of the best will make these lists.

Today, we’ll be looking at defensemen. We live in quite the era for the position, as long are the days where a fast-skating, puck-moving defenseman is viewed as a defensive liability. Instead, many come with defensive prowess that is better than any stay-at-home defender, although we still have some smart defensive defensemen in the league that do more than just push and shove. We only have room for five, so most of these will be the best at both.

Those who’ve read my work know how much I like to use statistics to base my lists off. While that’s still the case here, it’s hard to do a full list solely off stats because I’ve yet to find a website that combines regular season and playoff stats over the course of a certain date range, so I had to put a little bit of personal opinion into it as well.

I’m sure this will go well and we’ll all have a great time.

Honourable Mentions

Victor Hedman – It’s hard not to have a top defensemen list without Victor Hedman on it, considering he’s been one of the best at the position over the last 5-10 years, especially as he helped the Lightning to their third straight Stanley Cup Final. But, this is over the course of the whole of 2022, and a third of that time frame has seen Hedman struggle mightily taking on the top minutes for Tampa in the absence of Ryan McDonagh, with just 48.81% of the 5v5 expected goals. I won’t hold it against his entire career, but it does kick him out of the top five.

Moritz Seider – Seider is the new kid on the block, shining bright in his rookie season in Detroit on route to taking the Calder Trophy for the 2022 season. Not only was he productive with 50 points in 82 games, but he also held his own defensively, especially while playing top pair minutes on a horrible Red Wings team with Danny Dekeyser as his partner. He doesn’t crack this list because of his sophomore struggles this season, but considering that his partner this year is Ben Chiarot, I’m going to cut him a lot of slack and still give him an honourable mention.