Thank you for completing the Happiness Survey, a silly and mandatory check-in about your feelings. This is the second survey of the season, and it comes as the Capitals still cling to longshot status for the playoffs. The Caps are in a worse state than they were in November, but your average scores barely notched down overall.
Here now is the executive summary, intended only for C-suite execs like you, so please do not distribute this report and please consider the environment before printing this email.
We had 1,500 responses when I compiled this report. As a reminder, the survey is based on feelings. Here’s how we word it:
On a scale from 1 to 5, how HAPPY are you to have this player on the team?
1 means VERY UNHAPPY TO HAVE THEM ON THE TEAM
2 means UNHAPPY
3 means NEITHER HAPPY NOR UNHAPPY
4 means HAPPY
5 means VERY HAPPY TO HAVE THEM ON THE TEAM
Below are the objective results for each player, which I have sorted into subjective tiers.
Superhero tier
Your favorite Caps, the ones with the other guys on their backs.
- Dylan Strome 4.62 ± 0.71
- Charlie Lindgren 4.51 ± 0.77
- Tom Wilson 4.51 ± 0.81
There’s a lot of agreement here. More than 70 percent of respondents put Dylan Strome as a five. And this is the same top tier as earlier in the season, except for McMichael, who stepped down.
Glue guys tier
The kind of guys you need to have on your team.
- Nic Dowd 4.26 ± 0.86
- TJ Oshie 4.12 ± 0.97
- Connor McMichael 4.08 ± 0.86
I think it’s telling that Dowd, anchor of the fourth line, and McMichael, provider of secondary scoring, score near each other. They’re joined by Oshie, who started the season snakebit but has recently added scoreboard productivity to solid underlying play.
(I wonder if this is the last survey for Dowd.)
Problematic fave tier
The guys you argue about with your friends.
- Alex Ovechkin 3.85 ± 1.22
- John Carlson 3.52 ± 1.09
I’m surprised Alex Oveckhin has dropped only 0.2 from the last survey. Still, compared to previous seasons he is more like 0.9 points down. The critical feature with him and Carlson, to me, is the disagreement among respondents, which you can see in their bigger standard deviations. Ovechkin still received fives on 41 percent of responses and ones on just five percent.
Big strong boys tier
You can think of these players and feel fondly about ’em.
- Aliaksei Protas 3.82 ± 0.87
- Martin Fehervary 3.78 ± 0.86
- Anthony Mantha 3.60 ± 0.95
Forming some kind of margin between the team’s strongest player and a longer list of struggling players, here’s three smart choices. You’ve got Protas, whose upside is still unsettled. There’s Fehervary, who I’m kind of meh about personally. And there’s Mantha, who can finally score.
Buncha guys tier
Whole buncha guys here.
- Sonny Milano 3.49 ± 0.92
- Rasmus Sandin 3.48 ± 0.87
- Nicolas Aube-Kubel 3.37 ± 0.90
- Beck Malenstyn 3.32 ± 0.93
- Hendrix Lapierre 3.28 ± 0.81
- Max Pacioretty 3.18 ± 0.93
- Trevor van Riemsdyk 3.17 ± 0.84
To my surprise, Milano (out since December with an upper-body injury) was the biggest drop of this survey, down 0.6 from last time. Sandin, Malenstyn, and van Riemsdyk also saw declines, for different reasons, I’d assume.
I think we’re all moderating our formerly high expectations for Sandin. Malenstyn is still doing a tough job on the bottom line, and van Riemsdyk has at times been the team’s seventh defender.
Struggle bus tier
Hard to think that any of these guys are having a good season.
- Nick Jensen 2.94 ± 1.00
- Ethan Bear 2.82 ± 0.83
- Joel Edmundson 2.75 ± 0.85
- Darcy Kuemper 2.53 ± 1.05
Note there are three defenders in this tier – kind of telling about the team’s roster weakness there. Jensen’s down a full point from the middle of last season. Bear’s midseason signing has not been successful so far, and the offseason trade to get Edmundson was always kind of underwhelming.
Meanwhile, Kuemper. I dunno. I think he can turn it around, even if it’d be too late to matter.
Exception tier
These scores don’t count.
- Nicklas Backstrom 3.09 ± 1.45
- Alexander Alexeyev 2.95 ± 0.77
- Lucas Johansen 2.56 ± 0.85
- Matthew Phillips 2.42 ± 1.00
They combined for five games played last month. Nick Backstrom somehow ticked up 0.1 from the last survey. If that’s not just statistical noise, it’s a suggestion that the way we think about him will shift as the possibility of his return fades. Do we still even think of him as a current Washington Capital, even if he’s still on the books for next season?
Evgeny Kuznetsov tier
The tier with Evgeny Kuznetsov on it.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov 2.05 ± 1.13
He’s actually up from the last survey. Is that recency bias – he had two assists in his last game before the break – or is it something else? In the longer term, Kuznetsov has been on a rollercoaster, rising from a mid-tier 3.6 up to a 4.4 for a bit last season, and now down more than any player, but at least he’s on the right side of two again.
What do we think about what we thought?
