Down Goes Brown: Checking in on that super-easy NHL prediction contest, in which many of you are already out (2024)

On the eve of the 2020-21 season, I had an idea for a prediction contest. I admittedly didn’t put a ton of thought into it, but I liked the concept and thought it could be fun, so I threw together a call for entries. About 900 readers obliged, answering my eight “easy” questions about what would happen during that shortened season with as many or as few answers as they wanted. In the end, only one of those 900 entries was perfect, and it didn’t score well enough to win.

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In other words, this thing was harder than it looked. So of course, the sequel had to be even tougher. This year’s version had 10 questions, including one fiendish but optional bonus. Then again, we now had a proof-of-concept from Year 1 that could guide your strategy, so maybe this would be no problem at all.

Halfway into the season, how’s everybody doing? Let’s take a look and see.

The short answer is that it’s a bit of a mixed bag, which is probably to be expected given how many entries we have to wade through. There are 1,554 of them, to be precise. (And thanks to readers Mike and William, I now have some tools to help me parse all the entries rather than doing it by hand.) As with last year, there are a few questions that look like they’ll be easy pickings and a few others that are causing big problems. The key is whether you could figure out which were which.

A quick reminder of the rules: You got 10 simple and straightforward questions like “Name a GM who’ll definitely keep his job” or “Name a team that definitely won’t make the playoffs,” and you had to give at least one or as many as five answers. You get more points the more answers you give, but even one wrong answer gets you a zero for the question, so you had to balance the risk and reward when deciding how far to go.

This year’s edition of the contest can be found here, and you can search for your entry in Mike’s database here. Let’s run through the questions and see how it’s going.

1. Name up to five teams that will make the playoffs this year.

2. Name up to five teams that will not make the playoffs this year.

Simple enough, and last year both of these questions ended up being easy money, with only the Flyers tripping up more than a handful of entries. Otherwise, the teams that everyone knew would make the playoffs — like the Avalanche, Lightning, Golden Knights — cruised to their spots, and the consensus bad teams — like the Sabres, Senators and Red Wings — all missed by a mile. Basically, you should have had a ton of points in the bank after these two questions, and if you didn’t then you were probably already out of the running.

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That led to an obvious strategy for this year’s contest: Load up on max answers on the first two questions. So, how’s that working out?

Not great! This year’s standings have thrown some curveballs at us, and a whole lot of you are going to swing and miss. The big killer here is the Islanders, who showed up on about 900 entries as a sure-thing playoff team. They’re not mathematically eliminated yet (nobody is), but barring a miracle, the majority of entries will be taking a zero on Question 1. And if you did dodge the Islanders, you still may not be out of the woods yet, as about 400 entries picked the Oilers and 140 had the Jets.

It could get even worse on Question 2, although the outlook here is better than it was looking a month ago. A whopping 1,200 entries had the Ducks as a team that wouldn’t make the playoffs, and they’ve been holding down a spot for most of the season. They’re fading now, but still in the race, so there will be some nervous eyes on Anaheim. If they can’t make a comeback then this question should be relatively safe, aside from a few dozen of you who had the Kings or Rangers on your list.

3. Name up to five coaches who will not be fired or otherwise leave their job before the first day of 2022 free agency, not including any coach who was hired to their current job after Oct. 1, 2020.

4. Name up to five GMs who will not be fired or otherwise leave their job before the first day of 2022 free agency, not including any GM who was hired to their current job after Oct. 1, 2019.

Note the end date on these two — it’s not enough for a coach or GM to make it to the last game of the season, they also had to survive the first few weeks of the offseason. That means we won’t have a clear idea of how the question shakes out until the summer. But we can make some observations now.

The first is the one you’re probably already thinking of: Yeah, Joel Quenneville wiped out a whole lot of you — about 850 in all. (And yes, he counts even though he resigned, as the question is clear that any departure for any reason is in play.) Paul Maurice will get almost 200 of you, Dave Tippett takes down another 60, Travis Green got 30 and Dominique Ducharme had 20. Even Jeremy Colliton felt safe to 17 of you, although Alain Vigneault only had the confidence of four. Oh, and if Lou Lamoriello goes back to his old tricks and somehow decides to fire Barry Trotz after a disappointing season, say goodbye to almost everyone; Trotz was named on 1,350 entries.

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The GMs are safer, as they almost always are, because midseason front-office changes are rare. Stan Bowman was only named on 14 entries, Bob Murray on less than 10, and Jim Benning on just three. Even Marc Bergevin only surprised about 30 of you, so this question should yield plenty of points.

5. Name up to five goaltenders who will start at least 60 percent of their team’s regular-season games this year.

This may have been last year’s most important question, as it took out a bunch of entries but left enough behind that you really needed to ace it.

So far, the good news is that the most common answers of Andrei Vasilevskiy and Connor Hellebuyck look safe. So do Juuse Saros, Thatcher Demko and Marc-Andre Fleury, who all showed up several hundred times.

Andrei Vasilevskiy. (Kim Klement / USA Today)