Blue Jackets star was snubbed by the NHL Network on their list of top-20 wingers

This week, the NHL Network broke down its current list of the top-20 wingers in the league. This list was put together without the inclusion of Blue Jackets star winger Kirill Marchenko. Today, we're here to make the case that he should have been on there.

First, we fully understand the difficulty in putting together a list like this. There are a lot of talented players around the league who deserve recognition. And, we won't pick out a single player from this ranking that we think should not be included.

There are big time scorers listed here, as expected. It's a good mix of puck distributors, snipers, power forwards, or some combination of the above. They also included a few guys for their overall prowess, or ability to impact games in different ways. These are all highly capable players, with a good variety of attributes.

With all of that out of the way, let's break down the case for Kirill Marchenko. He certainly belongs in this conversation, and I would argue that his ability to impact games is on par with, or greater than some of the guys listed in this ranking.

Marchy can score.

Last season, Kirill showed the NHL that he can be an elite scoring winger. He found the net 31 times, and added 43 assists for 74 points in 79 games - one point ahead of the 20th ranked player on the NHL Network's list, with two fewer games played. Impressively, Kirill did this despite wearing a face shield for almost two months - and without the services of his regular center for an extended amount of time.

In each of his first three seasons in the league, he's exceeded 20 goals, improving upon his previous year's output each time. He's done this despite extremely strange coaching decisions such as benchings for the odd mistake, irregular line-mates, for a team that has been at the very least inconsistent offensively.

The next highest scoring forward for the Blue Jackets last season was Kent Johnson, who had 17 fewer points. The two rarely played together at even strength, with each driving separate lines. Simply put, Marchenko drove offense while he was on the ice for his team.

His points total ranked him tied for 34th in the NHL amongst all players. If you narrow this down to only wingers, he finished 15th. Obviously, it's not all about the points in this ranking. A lot of the players listed here impact the game physically, or with two-way dominance. Marchy can do that, too.

He's a two-way beast.

This is best evidenced by his 53% CORSI rating, which was third best on the team behind only Monahan and Yegor Chinakhov (notably, Chinny played a limited number of minutes). The team average was 49.3%, which tells us that they had the puck a lot more with Kirill on the ice, than they did when he was not.

Taking all of this into consideration, Kirill Marchenko is more than just a scoring winger. He's one of the better two-way players on the team. In fact, he's a very effective all-around player, comparing pretty favorably to a lot of the guys who made this list. If you sort these metrics and set the minimum to 1000 minutes played, he's inside the top-50 for CORSI league-wide.

When you put it all together, Marchenko stacks up right alongside some of the best wingers in the NHL from both a scoring and all-around perspective. He has the size, physicality, all-around presence, and ability to score. He's an elite winger in this league. The only thing missing is longevity, so perhaps a couple more seasons of this high end productivity will get him the recognition he deserves. That will also earn him quite the payday on his next contract extension.