Image by “cgb.fr” via Wikimedia Commons
Unfortunately, size couldn’t work forever…the Ducks’ failure to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals realized the 30% chance that none of our brackets correctly picked both series winners last round. My only conclusion is we don’t know anything about hockey.
In a related story, SAP bricked one of their picks as well, so the Finals will ultimately determine if their “85% accurate model” manages to do better than a coin flip this year (as of right now, they are 8 for 14). Let’s see how truculence, size, and experience did last round, where they stand for the playoffs, and which one of them will accurately predict who wins the Cup.
| Bracket | Series Guessed Correctly | Team Wins Accuracy |
| Truculence | 1 of 2 | 69% |
| Size | 0 of 2 | 50% |
| Experience | 1 of 2 | 81% |
“Experience” (average age of roster) was excellent last series, completely predicting the CHI-ANA outcome while stumbling a bit on NYR-TBL. “Size” (average BMI of roster), which had been our best performing of the three measures through the first two rounds, completely swung and missed on CHI-ANA (predicting an Anaheim sweep) and barely salvaged any dignity on NYR-TBL. That poor round ended up hurting size in the overall tally:
| Bracket | Series Guessed Correctly | Team Wins Accuracy |
| Truculence | 5 of 14 | 62% |
| Size | 5 of 14 | 67% |
| Experience | 6 of 14 | 69% |
Experience pulls ahead, but unfortunately the long-extolled virtues of truculence, size, and experience have all struggled below the coin flip, with no hope of matching the loonie this year. Darn.
The Finals predictions (click to enlarge):
Truculence and size like the Lightning in 7, while experience likes Chicago in 6 games. SAP also likes Chicago. We’ll see how it goes, though really, in case you haven’t been following this exercise, it doesn’t really matter.
That said, this should be a fun series to watch. So watch the games already.
Hockey Graphs 