NHL 27 Ratings: EA Puts Nylander Above Matthews, and It's the Right Call

The NHL 27 ratings put Nylander above Matthews, and the video game is right

EA Sports released its NHL 27 ratings this week, and the Toronto number that will get argued about is not the highest one. William Nylander comes in at 93 overall, one point clear of Auston Matthews at 92, with Matthew Knies and John Tavares both at 88. Connor McDavid received the first 99 in franchise history. NHL 27 releases Sept. 11.

Matthews' 92 is a two-point drop from the 94 he carried in NHL 26, and it is his second consecutive downgrade. For a player who was rated the best goal-scorer in hockey three years ago, that is a meaningful slide, and the reflexive Toronto reaction has been to call it disrespect. It is not. The rating is a lagging indicator of a real thing, and pretending otherwise does not help.

What the numbers behind the ratings actually say

Start with last season, because that is what EA is grading.

Matthews played 60 games in 2025-26 and produced 27 goals and 53 points before a knee injury ended his year. He had been fighting back and wrist problems for much of the season before that. Extrapolate the rate over a full schedule and you land somewhere around 37 goals and 72 points — good, well short of the standard he set, and the second straight season in which health governed his output more than form did.

Nylander played 65 games and put up 30 goals and 49 assists for 79 points. That is 1.22 points per game, a career high, and the fifth straight season he reached 30 goals. He also led Toronto with 22 power-play points. He did it while the team around him fell apart and missed the playoffs.

Set aside the jersey numbers and ask which of those two seasons you would rather have had. It is Nylander's, and it is not particularly close. EA's model is crude, but on this call it is reading the same data everyone else is.

The rating is about availability, and availability is the whole argument

Here is the part that gets lost. Nobody serious thinks Nylander is a better player than a healthy Matthews. At his peak, Matthews is the best pure goal-scorer of his generation and a legitimate Selke-calibre defensive centre. That version of him is a 96 in any rating system anyone would build.

The problem is that the Maple Leafs have not had that version consistently for two seasons. Matthews has now had a year interrupted by wrist and back issues and a year ended by a knee injury after a knee-on-knee hit from Radko Gudas. His summer has been dominated by rehab — we covered the recovery timeline and the bounce-back case earlier this month, and the reporting from his camp has been consistently optimistic.

Nylander, meanwhile, is the most durable high-end forward Toronto has. He shows up, he plays, he scores 30, and he does it whether the team around him is contending or collapsing. That reliability has been undervalued by Leafs fans for most of his career, largely because his style reads as casual and his defensive game has never been his selling point.

A rating that puts availability and recent production ahead of peak ceiling is going to favour Nylander right now. That is not an insult to Matthews. It is a description of the last 24 months.

Why this matters beyond the video game

Player ratings are entertainment. The reason to spend a word on them is that they are a decent proxy for how the rest of the league sees your roster, and Toronto's self-image has not caught up to how it is viewed from outside.

Inside the market, the framing is still that this is Matthews' team with Nylander as the flashy second option. Outside it, the 2026-27 Maple Leafs look like a Nylander-driven offence with a captain trying to prove he is still what he was, a No. 1 overall pick learning the league, and a lot of new depth. That is a materially different team than the one Toronto has been describing to itself.

Jim Hiller inherits that question directly. If Matthews is not immediately the driver, the coaching decision about whether to load up a Matthews-Nylander line or split them across two lines becomes the most consequential deployment call of the season. We argued the case for putting them together in July, and the NHL 27 numbers strengthen it: if your two best forwards are 93 and 92 and everything below them is 88 and under, concentration beats balance.

The Knies and Tavares numbers are the sneaky story

Knies at 88 is the rating worth watching, because it is the one most likely to be wrong within six months. He is 23, coming off a season that established him as a legitimate top-line power forward, and he is the player most Leafs observers expect to make the biggest leap in 2026-27. We laid out the 30-goal question around him this month. If he gets there and adds the net-front power-play work, 88 will look conservative fast.

Tavares at 88 at his age is a compliment. He is signed through 2028-29 at a $4,389,280 cap hit — one of the more team-friendly contracts on the roster — and EA still rates him as an above-average NHL centre. Toronto's second-line centre situation is far less scary than the discourse suggests.

What is missing from the conversation is Gavin McKenna. Rookies rate low by default, and the No. 1 overall pick will start well below where he finishes. Our look at his rookie-season targets and Calder case sets a realistic bar. The ratings that arrive in the January roster update are the ones that will tell you whether he is ahead of schedule.

Where we come down

LeafsLurker's position: Nylander at 93 is correct, Matthews at 92 is defensible, and the fact that Toronto fans find the ordering offensive is the actual news.

Matthews is going to be the most important player on this roster in 2026-27, and the season turns on his health more than on anything Chayka did in July. We ran the 40-goal math and think that is the fair benchmark for a full, healthy year. If he gets there, he is back to a 95 next September and this whole conversation disappears.

But he has to actually do it. Two years of interrupted seasons is a pattern, not a fluke, and treating a video game rating as a slight rather than a scoreboard is exactly the kind of defensiveness that has made this market bad at evaluating its own team. Nylander earned the higher number. Let him have it.

What's next

NHL 27 launches Sept. 11, which puts the full roster ratings in fans' hands the same week the Leafs' prospects play the NHL Prospect Challenge in Gatineau on Sept. 12-14. Training camp opens in mid-September and Toronto starts the regular season Sept. 29 at home against Montreal in an 84-game schedule.

EA updates ratings through the season, so the honest test is where these four sit at the trade deadline. If Matthews is above Nylander again by March, the Maple Leafs are probably a playoff team. If he is not, the questions about this core get considerably louder. Track it on our standings page.