Just two days into the new year and researchers at Unanimous AI have tasked the regular weekly swarm of hockey fans to predict a difficult Tuesday night schedule. To assess this evening’s games, the group had to look at contests between evenly-matched clubs, as well as instances where teams that might have otherwise been marginally strong favorites were playing on the road in hostile environments. It’s a stern challenge, but here’s how the swarm sees tonight playing out.

There’s been no better story this season in the NHL than that of the Cinderella Vegas Golden Knights. The Knights, defying any of the most optimistic predictions for their inaugural season, currently enjoy the best record in the NHL’s Western Conference as they surf the crest of a 10-game unbeaten streak. For today, they were a contested pick for the swarm’s pick of the night.

As you can see from the replay above, this isn’t our typical overwhelmingly confident prediction at first glance. For one thing, the swarm takes the puck to a Vegas win by a single goal. That’s one of the biggest indicators of confidence that they can express, and typically it takes a lot of evidence to move any prediction of a single-goal win into the top tier of our chart.

In this individual case, however, researchers do indeed get enough evidence to elevate this pick.  Even in the replay, you can see that a number of magnets are initially pulling to that two-goal win prediction, and that throughout all the magnets pull to the Vegas side of the hex. In the subsequent question, the swarm pulled to the highest bet confidence it had for any game on tonight’s schedule. And then as if to reinforce all of that, the swarm did indeed pick this game as its best bet on Tuesday’s schedule.

The replay of that pick of the night shows that the swarm is pretty much unanimous on pulling not just to the Bruins’ side of the hex, but also forming rapid consensus on the 2+ goals prediction. Boston has been playing very well of late and is climbing steadily up the standings, while Ottawa has been moving in the opposite direction, and the swarm’s confidence with a $100 hypothetical bet reflects that as well.

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