We run a prediction contest for our readers right before every regular season, and it results in two of my favorite posts of the year.
My very favorite comes at the end of the season, where I reveal the final results and laugh at you for being wrong. (This is not to be confused with my weekly power rankings, which run all season long and result in you laughing at me for being wrong.) But my second favorite is this one, where we dig into your answers and try to see what they tell us about what the hockey world’s smartest fans — i.e. my readers — are thinking about the coming season.
If you missed the contest post, you can find it here. The contest involves 10 simple questions, covering everything from team success to coaching and front office hot seats to individual awards. This year, we also worked in an Olympic question. And of course, there’s the all-or-nothing bonus question, which gives you the chance to risk your entire entry for the extra points that might push your entry into the winner’s circle.
We had well over 1,100 entries this year. This isn’t a poll with a random sample size, of course, and contest strategy could in theory result in some incentives for weird picks. But we can still learn some interesting things from who was named in your entries, and who wasn’t. Let’s dive in.
The teams
The first three questions are about team success (or lack thereof). You’re asked to name up to five teams you’re confident will make the playoffs, up to five you think will miss, and then up to five that will end up in the mushy middle, defined as anywhere from 9th to 24th.
In theory, that should be easy enough. In reality, even listing the most obvious teams can trip you up; last year, you all had the New York Rangers as the third most likely playoff team and the Montreal Canadiens as the fifth most likely to miss.
For this year, there were five teams that emerged as a clear top tier for playoff locks. In order, you had the Dallas Stars, Carolina Hurricanes, Vegas Golden Knights, Edmonton Oilers and Colorado Avalanche as your most common picks, all coming in with over 800 entries. The next team is our first Atlantic squad, as the Tampa Bay Lightning are a tier of their own at 563 entries. And then we drop all the way down to the Toronto Maple Leafs (224) and Florida Panthers (149), with nobody else over 100.
The obvious takeaway there is that you’re much more confident on the top of the West than the East, and that the Atlantic is a mess. I suppose you could flag the two-time defending champs only being the eighth most common pick as a surprise, but given all the injuries in Florida it’s probably understandable. The Presidents’ Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets only showed up on 66 entries, which is shockingly few but also well ahead of the East’s top seed – the Washington Capitals were mentioned by only 16 of you, which is to say just over 1 percent, despite making it with 22 points to spare a year ago.
For the playoff misses, there’s no surprise at the top of the list, where the Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks both cleared 1,000 entries. The Pittsburgh Penguins were next at over 800, followed by the Seattle Kraken (673) and Philadelphia Flyers (530). From there it drops into the 200s for the Nashville Predators and Buffalo Sabres, and then down to the Boston Bruins, New York Islanders and Anaheim Ducks.
One observation: In a league where we know there’s always plenty of playoff turnover, recency bias still rules the day. Each and every one of your top 15 picks to miss the playoffs missed them last year, with only the Rangers dropping out of that group. The most common playoff teams for this question were the Minnesota Wild and Ottawa Senators, and each only appeared on three entries. It’s either going to be more of the same in the NHL this year or a whole lot of you will want this one back.
As usual, the mushy middle question saw the widest spread. The Utah Mammoth took the crown here with 562 mentions, narrowly beating out the St. Louis Blues (548) and Habs (512). In case you’re wondering, the Wild finished fifth, which seems to be their floor for this particular question.
The Utah Mammoth are the most popular pick to end up between ninth and 24th. (Steve Roberts / Imagn Images)
Finally, there’s the one insight we don’t ask about directly: Which team is the hardest to project? In other words, which teams was mentioned the fewest times in all three questions combined, indicating that readers had the least confidence in firmly slotting them in anywhere at all?
If you’re subscribed to the Red Light newsletter, you already know the answer. (If you’re not, you should do that right now.) The team with the fewest mentions across all three questions was the Jets, who, despite leading the league with 116 points last year, received only those 66 mentions as a playoff team, plus 23 more as a mushy middle candidate. That total of 89 put them slightly ahead of the New Jersey Devils and the Capitals as the teams you wanted no part of projecting.
Incidentally, if it seems strange that a Presidents’ Trophy winner would lead this category … well, I think it is too. But surprisingly, it’s happened before: just two years ago the Bruins got the nod. That was the year they’d lost Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, but they still put up 109 points and made the playoffs easily. Use that as a motivation, Jets fans. (Just don’t ask what happened the year after.)
Finally, shout out to ChatGPT, which was given a chance to enter the contest for the first time and picked the Arizona Coyotes to miss the playoffs. The future is in great hands.
The hot seats
Questions 4 and 5 ask you to name the coaches and GMs, respectively, who’ll keep their job until July 1. That means they have to make it through not just the season, but also the early offseason, without being fired, resigning, retiring, getting kicked upstairs or otherwise moving on.
As always, the burning question here is whether you’re all getting any better at actually reading the questions carefully enough to realize you can’t just plug in the most recent hires. And the answer: No, not really, with lots of entries mentioning ineligible names here.
Among the coaches, the safest name is Paul Maurice, whose back-to-back rings make his seat ice cold according to 832 of you. Jon Cooper is next at 762, followed by a drop down to Rod Brind’Amour at 578, Kris Knoblauch at 419 and Jared Bednar at 413. It’s hard to argue with any of those picks, although it’s worth noting all five teams are firmly in win-now mode, which could mean bad things if we see any early playoff exits (or worse).
For the GMs, the safest name is Maurice’s boss in Florida, Bill Zito, who was listed 882 times. Somewhat surprisingly, there’s a big drop off to Jim Nill in Dallas at 576, despite his streak of three straight GM of the Year wins. The only other names to clear the 300 mark were, in order, Julien BriseBois, Kent Hughes, Kelly McCrimmon and Mike Grier.
Of course, the other side of this question is fun too. While we don’t ask you to pick coaches and GMs who’ll be fired, we can certainly read into which names don’t come up. Among coaches, only seven of you think Andrew Brunette is safe in Nashville. That’s a bit better than the 11 of you who mentioned Lindy Ruff and Jim Hillier, or the 14 who had Patrick Roy. Among GMs, the only surprise at the bottom was that there were 10 of you who feel like Kevyn Adams is completely safe, holding steady from last year’s contest. You also think Patrik Allvin (18 entries) should be nervous, as should Bill Armstrong (24), Don Sweeney (24) and Chris Drury (29).
To put that in perspective, each of those GMs received less confidence from readers than Doug Armstrong, despite the Blues announcing over a year ago that he’ll be replaced by Alex Steen at the end of the season. Either 39 of you missed that announcement, or you figure it’s all an elaborate ruse to mess with the contest.
And finally, let’s get to what’s undoubtedly the most important update of them all: the annual “How many people think Joe Sakic is still the GM in Colorado?” check-in. It may be the end of an era, because we’re now down to just four of you who don’t realize he hasn’t held that job since way back in July 2022.
The players
The last five questions are all about players, starting with one that asks which goalies will start at least 50 games. In other words: Which starters will stay healthy and play well enough to keep their jobs?
For years, this one always seemed to feature a clear top tier of five names. Not this season, as you all like reigning Vezina winner Connor Hellebuyck (980 entries) and feel good about Igor Shesterkin (837), but that’s followed by a drop down to Jake Oettinger (677) and Andrei Vasilevskiy (580) and nobody else even cracked 400. One name stood out here: Two-time Cup winner Sergei Bobrovsky appeared on only 97 entries, even though he’s topped 50 starts in each of the last two years and Panthers backup Daniil Tarasov is entering his fifth season having never appeared in more than 24 games.
Question 7 asks for rookies who’ll finish in the Top 10 of Calder balloting, and there’s no surprise at the top of the list. Montreal’s Ivan Demidov was a nearly unanimous pick, showing up on 1,052 entries. That was nearly double the second-place name, Zeev Buium (568), and well ahead of Jimmy Snuggerud (496) and Ryan Leonard (338). Nobody else cracked the 300 mark, including No. 1 pick Matthew Schaefer, who finished seventh with 252 mentions. Then again, when has a defenseman ever won the Calder?
The eighth question focuses on blue line and Norris votes, and featured the single biggest runaway in the contest. Colorado’s Cale Makar was a near-unanimous pick, clocking in at 1,108 entries. Quinn Hughes was next with an impressive 1,065, and then it’s a massive drop off all the way down to Rasmus Dahlin (479) and Zach Werenski (457), with nobody else topping 250. Shout out to Brian S. for being the lone entry to pick Brandon Montour, because I’d always wondered if Ron Francis had a burner account here.
Cale Makar was the runaway top entry for Norris votes this season. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
We’re looking for Hart votes in Question 9, and as you’d expect, Connor McDavid was the clear leader with 1,082 entries. Nathan MacKinnon was a close-ish second at 990, followed by Nikita Kucherov (658), Leon Draisaitl (590), and Auston Matthews (391). Interestingly, although probably not surprisingly given voter bias against goalies, reigning winner Hellebuyck was only mentioned 45 times. And for what it’s worth, the league’s soon-to-be highest-paid player, Kirill Kaprizov, showed up on 287 entries. Is that worth $17 million? Maybe not, but he’s got a year before the extension kicks in, so it’s fine.
Finally, the tenth question was brand-new this year, and asked you to name a player who’d score a goal in the Olympics. This was another McDavid runaway, although his total dropped to 906 entries. MacKinnon (632) and Matthews (620) were in a tight battle for second spot, and then there was a big drop down to our first European names: Leon Draisaitl (389), David Pastrnak (380) and Mikko Rantanen (348). They were the only other players to top 300, although Sidney Crosby just missed at 299.
And in one of the biggest stunners of the contest, only three entries each mentioned Nikita Kucherov or Alexander Ovechkin, mathematically proving that you guys are more aware of Russia not being in the 2026 Games than you are of the Avalanche switching GMs 39 months ago.
The bonus
Ah, the dreaded bonus question. Introduced in the contest’s second year, it offers a hard-to-resist chunk of bonus points, but risks your entire entry. This year’s question asked for a player who’d score at least 45 goals, and who wasn’t Draisaitl or Matthews.
Would you take the bait? Many of you did. But not nearly as many as in previous years, despite the goal cutoff dropping from the previous 50 to a more attainable 45. That’s probably not surprising, given that last year saw the contest won by someone who skipped the bonus for the first time ever. As all the smart people love to tell us, it’s a copycat league contest.
Still, several hundred of you decided to go with the “no guts, no glory” approach. Among those, the leading answer was McDavid, with 191 entries. He beat out Pastrnak (127), Kaprizov (95) and Tage Thompson (62), with nobody else hitting the 30-mark.
Again, the names that weren’t mentioned tell an interesting story here. The big one is William Nylander, who was the only player other than Draisaitl to actually score 45 last year. Despite that, only 26 of you picked him to repeat. Sam Reinhart was snubbed again, finishing in single digits for the second straight year despite having a 57-goal season on his resume. Jake Guentzel was only listed twice despite having three 40-goal seasons to his name, including last year.
Searching the bottom of the list, we do find an early contender for entry of the year: Daniel L., who was the only one to list current goals leader Pavel Dorofeyev as his bonus entry.
And in what can only be described as a reasonable but depressing development, only three of you went with the GOAT of the goal scorers, with Ovechkin getting (almost) no love. That tied him with Matthews, who would be a solid pick if he wasn’t specifically and unmissably disqualified in the question itself. It’s a bold strategy, but personally, I would have gone with Joe Sakic.