This is the last one of these I’ll get to do for 10 months – I should make it count. Ok, umm… uhh… oh. Can we figure out the playoff schedule next year? Rushing from the end of the regular season through the first three rounds of the playoffs and then taking a week break before the Final is nonsense. Surely that must have been a mistake: two days after the regular season and between each round, maybe three days before the Final. Boom, solved the NHL’s playoff schedule. Wow, what a platform I have here at Evolving Hockey to crack these extremely difficult cases.
Although we’ve come to the end of the road, still I can’t let go. It’s unnatural, you belong to me… I was trying to fit in a Boyz II Men reference here like I did for the podcast summary because that song is stuck in my head right now and feels topical, but it isn’t really working that well. The Conference Finals gave us a lot to chew on. The Dallas / Edmonton series was an actual coin flip in our model last round, so it’s hard to really say much about the outcome there – although, the Stars have started saying a lot in various ways after the loss. Carolina brought with them a “historic” team from a strength perspective per our model, but they couldn’t make it past 5 games against the barreling train that is the 2025 Panthers. Is it McDavid’s year? Will Sam Bennett manage to piss off even more fans? Can Sergei Bobrovsky convince our projection systems that old goalies are, actually, good? It’s time we figure this all out. Mainly the last part because I’m starting to get a little irritated.
The Table
| Conference | Home | Away | Round 2 % | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| East | CAR | FLA | 57.2% – 42.8% | 1-4 |
| West | DAL | EDM | 49.6% – 50.4% | 1-4 |
Stanley Cup Final
Edmonton Oilers (P3) vs. Florida Panthers (A3)
52.9% 47.1%
What else is there to say at this point? Every year when the Cup Final rolls around, it almost feels silly to evaluate the prior rounds with any scrutiny, models, or data. Sure, the Oilers were able to knock Jake Oettinger from his modern-day playoff throne (still 6th in total GSAx since 2007 in the playoffs mind you), and yeah, the Panthers “exposed” the “paper-thin” Hurricanes and their lack of “star power” in 5 games. But now that we’re here, I always feel the need to remind everyone (including myself) of something that we tend to forget: it takes a lot of luck to get to the Final. If real-life were a simulation and I, the Administrator of the computer that ran this simulation, could just control-C and re-run the for loop, we’d have a wildly different final. Or maybe we wouldn’t. Either way, the long-winded point I’m trying to make here is that the Playoffs aren’t about gleaning anything useful about team construction, or whether your favorite team (the Leafs) should re-sign their big pending UFA (Mitch Marner) this summer, or whether your coach maybe should’ve been a little nicer to that star goalie that got you to the Conference Finals in the first place (ok, that might be something we can take away from the playoffs).
We have a repeat Cup Final for the first time in 16 years with two absolute powerhouses going at it, again. We as fans couldn’t ask for a more dramatic and entertaining Final. That’s what it’s all about. Well, ok, I’m still a little irritated that Carolina lost just because they were our Model’s team, and if I were a betting man, I probably would’ve lost a lot of money a week ago (this is why I don’t bet on sports because I definitely would’ve destroyed my TV with the easily-tossed remote that came with it). After everything that got us here, we would like to post a PSA, of sorts, for anyone who’s stuck with us this long: have fun, be safe, and don’t radically change your team in the ensuing months because of one (or more) 7-game exhibition matches in the spring that didn’t go your way. Or do that. I’m not your Dad. Maybe you are the admin who can re-run the simulation.