One of the highlights of the sports calendar each year is the NHL playoffs. Even as exciting as the NHL regular season can be, things go up a notch in the tournament for Lord Stanley’s Cup. There’s faster skating, more physical contact…and far fewer whistles than during the rest of the year. This week a swarm of NHL fans convened to predict the playoff bracket on through to the Cup final.

Researchers at Unanimous AI asked the swarm to predict a winner in each series matchup. The swarm was then also asked how many games each series might run, and then to assign a hypothetical wagering amount on each matchup. While that virtual money wager is a strong measure of the swarm’s conviction in a forecast, the number of games they set for each series also helps to provide some depth and clarity for how evenly paired the two teams in each playoff round might be.

In the East, the swarm’s pick to make it to the finals is the Tampa Bay Lightning. As the replay above shows, the swarm thinks they’ll overcome New Jersey in the first round and has confidence in that prediction. In the second round, things get interesting. The Bruins and Lightning fought a see-saw battle through March for first place overall in the east, with Tampa eventually coming out on top. The swarm thinks the Lightning prevail in a potential playoff matchup and will outlast the Stanley Cup champion Penguins to get to the final.

In the West it’s safe to say that the swarm was bullish on the Predators. Before the group made predictions, they were asked about one of the key factors in most Stanley Cup playoff runs: goaltending. As you can see from the replay above, the swarm chose Nashville netminder Pekka Rinne as the best of the playoff goalies. It’s hard to argue that selection, as we already have evidence from last year’s playoffs and Nashville’s surprise run from eight-seed to Stanley Cup runner-up that Rinne is up to the task of carrying a team if that’s needed.

With that noted, then it’s little surprise that the swarm not only picked Nashville to blitz Colorado in the first round, they also made this their highest confidence prediction of any matchup in the playoffs. Looking further down the line, the swarm predicts the West will come down to a showdown between the miracle Vegas Golden Knights and Nashville, with the Preds having just enough to win that matchup and skate into the finals.

And should the swarm be correct about the Eastern and Wester conference champions, that sets up a potentially epic Stanley Cup finals battle between the top two seeds in the league. The replay above shows that the swarm thinks that Nashville should win that potential matchup, but thinks they’ll need seven games to do that.

We’ll be holding weekly NHL swarms and paying $25 to the highest performing member of the Swarm? Want to join the Swarm or see the picks? Click the button below…

Want to learn more about our Swarm AI platform? Check out our TED talk…