THN: NHL Front Office Confidence Survey

[sureLoss]

http://www.thehockeynews.com/news/ar...-team-is-doing

We created a survey asking people to rank each team’s front office in six different categories. The results are in, and not overly surprising.

The results are in. Just over 1,300 people took our annual Front Office Confidence survey, voting on how they view every team’s ability in six categories: roster building, cap management, drafting and developing, trading, free agency and their overall vision.

Of the over 1,300 voters, not everyone will have workable knowledge of every team’s management group and we ended up with around 800 to 1,000 votes per team. Sample size matters with something like this and we feel we have enough responses here to make a fair ranking based on their votes. The 95 percent confidence interval is +/-0.06 on average, meaning we are 95 percent sure the true results are within a very small range of roughly 0.12. If there’s a team’s spot you disagree with, know that their ranking could be a couple spots higher or lower based on that, but not much.

The overall ranking is determined by a weighted average of the score in each category based on how important survey respondents felt each category was in last year’s survey. Drafting and developing was viewed as the most important front office skill, followed by roster building, vision, cap management, trading and finally free agency. For the Vegas Golden Knights, each category was weighted equally.

What’s different about this year’s edition is that we added team filters to the survey. While the overall rankings will be decided by public opinion, beside that will be the difference in fan base opinion to see how much more or less confident fans of that specific team are in what their team is doing.

[codynw]

Flames have pretty much their entire core locked up long term with zero cap hits over $7M. But their cap management is only ranked 6th? What 5 teams could possibly be in a better situation than that?

[Finger Cookin]

Takeaway: Coyotes, Devils, and Flyers fans are pretty delusional. Wild, Sharks, and Caps fans are a touch bitter.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by codynw

Flames have pretty much their entire core locked up long term with zero cap hits over $7M. But their cap management is only ranked 6th? What 5 teams could possibly be in a better situation than that?

1. Nashville
2. Tampa
3. Carolina
4. Arizona
5. Pittsburgh

Not sure what criteria they used to come up with that.

Nashville had one of the lowest payrolls in the league last season and went to the Finals, so they make sense at #1.

Yzerman has been able to get some good-value long-term deals signed. There is risk that he's got a lot of long-term deals and if a couple of those players don't continue improving, he could get stuck in a situation like the Oilers with their 6x6 guys, where you're overpaying the underperformers and underpaying the overperformers.

Carolina had a very low payroll and weren't the worst team in the league, so I guess that's a mark in their favour.

I don't really know how Arizona is on the list at all. They filled up on so many bad dead contracts that they ended up having a bonus overage at the end of the season. Sure, they didn't spend much on their roster, but they also had one of the worst teams in the league. Next year, they're paying more for Calgary's starting goalie than either of their own two goalies.

Pittsburgh's cap strategy seems to be: Have the best players in the world and pay them a lot. Fill out the roster with whatever else you can afford and hope they perform well playing alongside the best players in the world. Can't really argue with success.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

Takeaway: Coyotes, Devils, and Flyers fans are pretty delusional. Wild, Sharks, and Caps fans are a touch bitter.

I was actually about to say that the Flyers are being grossly underrated here. When you look at what Hextall has done since taking over a team with terrible contracts across the board to completely reconstructing their prospect base and fixing their cap situation, it's miracle work. I'd have the Flyers in my top 3 personally. Their fans are more in touch with their team's management than the public, which is probably confusing Hextall with previous managers.

[jlh2640]

Originally Posted by getbak

1. Nashville
2. Tampa
3. Carolina
4. Arizona
5. Pittsburgh

Not sure what criteria they used to come up with that.

Nashville had one of the lowest payrolls in the league last season and went to the Finals, so they make sense at #1.

Yzerman has been able to get some good-value long-term deals signed. There is risk that he's got a lot of long-term deals and if a couple of those players don't continue improving, he could get stuck in a situation like the Oilers with their 6x6 guys, where you're overpaying the underperformers and underpaying the overperformers.

Carolina had a very low payroll and weren't the worst team in the league, so I guess that's a mark in their favour.

I don't really know how Arizona is on the list at all. They filled up on so many bad dead contracts that they ended up having a bonus overage at the end of the season. Sure, they didn't spend much on their roster, but they also had one of the worst teams in the league. Next year, they're paying more for Calgary's starting goalie than either of their own two goalies.

Pittsburgh's cap strategy seems to be: Have the best players in the world and pay them a lot. Fill out the roster with whatever else you can afford and hope they perform well playing alongside the best players in the world. Can't really argue with success.

Arizona and Carolina suck and dont spend any money so they should not be considered good.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by jlh2640

Arizona and Carolina suck and dont spend any money so they should not be considered good.

The Canes are a fantastic young team.

[jlh2640]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

The Canes are a fantastic young team.

Fantastic is a reach man.