from David Staples of The Cult of Hockey,

In The Cult rankings, six players were given “top player points” for each NHL year, with the points going to three forwards, two defencemen and one goalie.

A player earned three points in a season if he finished first in MVP voting. So Wayne Gretzky, with his nine Hart Trophies, earned 27 of his 37 top player points in that manner.

A player earned two points if he finished second in Hart Trophy voting in the pre-Second World War period. In the post-Second World War period, voters started to under-value defencemen, so in the Cult’s rankings we tried to correct for this by having the winner of the Norris Trophy each year take the second place points. Nicklas Lidstrom, with his seven Norris Trophy wins, earned 14 of his 20 points that way. In the end, the Cult system of awarding points saw 18 defencemen get ranked in the top 54 players, which is the correct distribution.

continued...

I have a feeling readers may question some of the Top players...