Another year, another front office confidence rankings. For the past two seasons I’ve conducted a survey at The Hockey News judging how confident fans are in each front office around the league and now they’re here at The Athletic.



Over 2,000 fans took part in the survey, voting on each team’s ability in six categories: roster building, cap management, drafting and development, trading, free agency and vision. The total score was based on how important respondents felt each category was in the first survey.



The big sticking point for a lot of people is the fact that not every fan will have complete knowledge of every front office. It’s a fair critique, but it undersells the wisdom of the crowd approach. There were roughly 1,000 votes per team and generally speaking, public opinion was pretty close to that of each fan base. Where the two most diverged is where things get really interesting.



In a survey like this, it’s a necessary...