Here’s Where Patrice Bergeron Ranks On NHL Network’s Top 50 Players List

The wider NHL community has accepted Patrice Bergeron is as good as Boston has long believed he is.

The NHL Network on Sunday ranked the Boston Bruins center 14th on its list of the top 50 players in the league. The NHL Network hosts and analyst describe him as the “perfect” player due to his ability to score and create goals and his commitment to defense, which has helped him win the Selke Trophy four times so far in his career.

“His game is so fundamentally sound,”NHL Network’s Brian Lawton said, per NHL.com. “It’s one thing to be able to learn the game offensively — that comes to a lot of players because that’s all they ever work on — but he is money in the (face-off circle), he has been forever. That’s why whatever line he plays on, they drive play consistently. … He thinks the game equally as strong on the defensive side of the puck, and that’s really, for me, what separates this guy.”

Bergeron joins Tuukka Rask (No. 44) and David Pastrnak (No. 25) among Bruins players the NHL Network has selected for its Top 50 list.

After a season in which Bergeron scored 32 goals, racked up a career-high 79 points and led the Bruins to within one win of a Stanley Cup triumph, there’s no surprise why the NHL Network thinks so highly of him.