Welcome to the 7th Annual Captains’ Poll. For the past seven seasons, I have asked all the captains to give me their top five teams based on the draft. We then get to see if the season plays out like captains expected it to play out. In short, history has shown that teams expected to be the best will fall short.
Here is a rundown of previous winners that include their eventual regular season record, playoff performance, and percentage of total possible votes received:
2018: Goldfarb 12-10 Lost in the first round 53.8%
2019: Brock 10-12 Lost in the semi finals 87.9%
2020: Pollock 11-6 Lost in the semi finals 66.1%
2021: Wallman 15-7 Lost in the finals 77.5%
2022: Lapine 14-8 Lost in the finals 80.0%
2023: Drashinsky 11-11 Lost in the first round 98.8%
Last year featured our most dominating pre-season favorite ever and shockingly, Drashinsky stumbled through an 11-11 season and a first-round exit. For those wondering how the eventual champions finished in each season’s pre-season polls, here’s the breakdown:
2018: Applebaum No votes
2019: Applebaum No votes
2020: Steinberg 9th place
2021: Larocca 2nd place
2022: Larocca 5th place
2023: Meyer 10th place
As you can see, pre-season expectations have very little bearing on who eventually wins the title.
This year, we have our seventh different captain in seven years earning the top spot. Here is how the point system works:
Captains were asked to rank the five best teams. Five points were awarded if a team was ranked first, four points awarded if a team was ranked second, etc. Captains could not vote for their own team. The final rankings is based on total points received with any tiebreaker going to the team that was mentioned on the most ballots.
Rank Team # of points Number of ballots
1 Larocca 77 17
2 Wallman 67 17
3 Bykofsky 37 13
4 Pingaro 29 9
5 Meyer 15 7
6 Pollock 13 7
7 Rosenstock 6 4
8 Goddard 6 2
9 Kessler 5 3
10 Conti 4 4
11 Applebaum 4 2
12 Drashinsky 3 2
12 Lombardi 3 2
14 Marrone 1 1
Larocca earned 90.6% of possible points, making them the second most dominant selection in the history of the poll. Interesting enough, Wallman is the first team ever to not win the poll but still appear on every possible ballot. Just like last year, the Silverbergs are on the team that earned first place in the poll. There is nothing like a combo pick going later than they were slotted to get captains excited for that team. We’ll see how all of this plays out. Good luck to all.
