A month ago, 16 teams skated onto the ice for the playoff chase to the oldest trophy in North American sports, the Stanley Cup. We’re now down to the final four teams, and Unanimous A. I. was interested to see how a swarm of NHL fans would use UNU to predict the conclusion of the 2017 playoff hunt.
The 2017 Conference Finals feature a mix of regular visitors to deep playoff runs, alongside a couple of surprising clubs. Anaheim and Pittsburgh are hardly strangers to all of this, but they’ll be joined by an Ottawa club making their first appearance in the Conference Final since 2007…and a Nashville team making their first NHL Final Four in franchise history. So how does the UNU NHL Swarm see things playing out?
In the Eastern Conference Finals, the swarm predicts that the Penguins will best the upstart Senators, with Pittsburgh’s skill on the puck overcoming the clogging, trapping Ottawa defense. As one swarm participant put it, “Pittsburgh just beat the best team in the league…” and that seemed to be the general sentiment here.
Out West, the swarm was bullish on Anaheim’s chances. Though the Predators have seemed like a team on a mission in the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Ducks were able to handle and equally fast-skating high-pressure team in Edmonton in the Conference semi-finals, and the swarm seemed to take that into account.
If the UNU Swarm predictions for the Conference championships hold up, we’ll see our first all-waterfowl Stanley Cup finals between the Ducks and Penguins. Unanimous A. I. asked the swarm’s opinion there, too. The swarm moved pretty strongly in forecasting that the Stanley Cup would remain under the tenancy of the Penguins for at least another year.
Whether you love hockey or football, baseball for soccer, Unanimous A.I. will be conducting weekly swarms to pick the outcomes of games. If you’d like to either join a swarm or just get the predictions weekly, feel free to drop us a line below.
