We know who you are rooting for in the 2022-23 playoffs

April 17, 2023 8:06 am

Last week we asked you, dear readers, which teams you’ll be supporting in the playoffs. It turns out the Washington Capitals will not be participating.

More than 1500 respondents ranked their top three teams, plus the one team upon which they wish naught but suffering.

First, your enthusiasm. Caps fans are not particularly psyched about the playoffs, scoring their excitedness at a 3.1 out of five, compared to a 4.3 among non-Caps fans (who made up only five percent of our population). Similarly, Caps fans are 0.9 points less likely to actually watch the playoffs, which is a shame because it’s gonna be good as hell.

This is all to be expected, but it’s fun to use numbers if you’re weird like me.

Now onto your non-Caps teams. We asked you to rank your top three preferred teams, a simple task four percent of you could not manage, opting to select “NONE” across the board. Of the teams you were willing to name, one team was far-and-away the most common.

The Seattle Kraken are the overwhelming favorite team among our respondents, chosen in a slot by 43 percent of you. The Kraken are also the least disliked team by far, chosen by a grand total of three cruel people as the team you’re rooting against. By my measurement, they’ve got a 99-percent positive ratio, which is cute and nice.

Your second favorite team is more complicated. The Boston Bruins actually received the most number-one votes (15 more than the Kraken), but were chosen far fewer overall – 30 percent of respondents named them as preferred. The big twist is that the overdogs are also your most hated team, with 28 percent of you using your single-shot “worst” slot against them. Their positivity ratio is 26-percent positive, which is bad – but we’ll see worse soon.

Rounding out the rest of the top five are the Edmonton Oilers, New Jersey Devils, and Toronto Maple Leafs. I’ve adopted one of those teams, so that’s cool, and one is in the west, so that’s easy, but the Leafs is an out-there choice. Has Steve Dangle so thoroughly infiltrated our ranks?

The team receiving the fewest mentions in preference is also the team with the lowest preference ratio: the Tampa Bay Lightning. Winners of two of the last three Cups and sporting no ex-Caps except assistant coach (future Caps head coach?) Jeff Halpern, there’s little for you to like. They have a nine percent positivity score.

Now for the despised teams. After our first-place Bruins (boo!) comes a division rival who is nearly as reviled as Tampa: The New York Rangers, chosen by 22 percent of respondents as the team you’re rooting against. They’re playing the Devils in the quarterfinal, so that’s cool with me. Behind them is the bunch of jerks Carolina Hurricanes, then Tampa, then the Vegas Golden Knights, with whom I suspect Caps fans have some bad blood.

The biggest curiosity to me of the whole group is the New York Islanders, who were not named in any slot, good or bad, by all but six percent of you. We apparently just do not care about our division rivals who eliminated the Penguins and whose head coach was once a well-liked member of the Caps staff. I suspect maybe we all know they’re about to get washed by Carolina.

Now, I have assembled a cool scatter plot of which teams you like and which you do not like.