If this method catches on and holds water going forward, countless National Hockey League analysts could be out of work.
I’ve organized an NHL playoff bracket pool at our office for the last several years, based closely on the actual Bracket Challenge nhl.com holds every spring. Despite considering myself fairly knowledgeable on the ins and outs of professional hockey here in North America, I have never won the thing.
Most of the points accrued come from a successful first round; let’s face it, if you do poorly with your initial selections in the 16-team frenzy that is the conference quarter-finals, you’re not going to have a very solid bracket going forward all the way to the Cup Final, which is now upon us this week.
I’ve had excellent first rounds and mediocre ones – this year definitely fell into the latter category, as I went 4/8 while only correctly predicting one first-round series bang on (New Jersey defeating the New York Rangers in seven). I had Dallas beating Boston in the final, and we all know how that panned out. Woof.
My wife is not a sports fan. She surprises me with the little tidbits of knowledge she offers from time to time, but doesn’t follow any team in any league or sport. She also has a hard time understanding why I get so worked up when the Flyers or Blue Jays crap the proverbial bed, as has become tradition with both every single year in one form or another.
In the past, Nicole has made her playoff bracket selections in some, let’s say, ‘unique’ ways. She has based her picks according to team colours, the attractiveness of the team captains facing off against one another in a given matchup, or sometimes makes them without any apparent rhyme or reason at all.
This year she decided to focus on the goaltenders’ ‘good lookery’ to make her selections. Apparently there aren’t many stunners manning the pipes in the NHL these days, based on her comments as we went through each series back in April. Regardless, she settled on a Florida-Edmonton final, pertaining to the two starting netminders heading into the playoffs at the time. Personally, I think I’ve got the advantage over both Alex Lyon and Stuart Skinner in the old looks department, but I digress.
Nicole wound up with some interesting choices, to say the least. Choices that could now be considered brilliant in hindsight. I remember trying to interject some of my ‘well-rounded hockey knowledge and inside analytics know-how’ into the equation after she confidently rhymed off each pick. She wasn’t having it. Didn’t care. Move on to the next.
My wife is the only person I know who picked both Florida and Seattle to win their respective first-round series – and correctly getting them both in seven games to boot. Incredible. Having the Panthers going all the way to the final is another prediction that has come to fruition that I highly doubt more than three per cent (one per cent?) of all bracket players had.
I recall seeing several instances of so-called ‘experts’ confidently predicting a Boston-Colorado Stanley Cup Final on Sportsnet or TSN. “I can’t see anyone beating Boston this year,” they said with a smirk. Well kids, they did lose. And in spectacular fashion after leading the Panthers 3-1 in the opening round. As for the defending-champion Avalanche, “They should roll to the final in a wide-open Western Conference.” Nobody apparently informed the Kraken that they had zero chance of winning. They were largely the better team throughout that series, and proceeded to take Dallas the distance in the second round as well.
It only amplifies the arbitrary animal that is the NHL post-season. If a team gets in, they can get hot at the perfect time and all bets are completely thrown out the window. Picking strictly favourites in your bracket will pan out to some extent, but those underdog teams can wreak havoc. Remember Columbus sweeping the Presidents Trophy-winning Tampa Bay Lightning a few years back? That one was a bracket annihilator.
Despite hitting 6/8 first-round series and nailing three of them exactly right in terms of number of games played, Nicole still can’t win the pool this year after our production manager Marie also had a sterling opening round, going 7/8. But again, another individual who doesn’t follow hockey closely and made her selections seemingly at random. Nicole is headed for at least a second-place tiebreaker, and excited at the prospect of tripling her buy-in.
Next playoffs I am going to adopt something along the lines of Nicole’s methodology. Maybe not rhyming off which goalie is cuter (I should note here that it’s maybe fortunate for my wife that Sergei Bobrovsky didn’t start the post-season for the Panthers, otherwise her bracket may have panned out much differently) to make my selections, but something just as arbitrary.
I’m leaning towards the most ridiculous mascot for each team or perhaps which city receives the most accumulative precipitation in a given year. I have the feeling it will be more effective than pouring through statistics and regular season results that mean absolutely squat once the playoff puck is dropped.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column, for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
