The playoffs have been a wacky time. Hardly anyone predicted the Canadiens to win their opening round series, yet they made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Final. I guess that’s why they play the games.

Before you take stock in anyone’s Stanley Cup predictions maybe it’s time we check out their records so far. It’s much easier to put this up when my underdog pick continues to win (that would be the Flyers – I readily admit I had no faith in Montreal).

It was pretty hard to go back and find different writer’s predictions, so the list is much smaller than when I put it up after the first round. Maybe that’s because some people made terrible picks and didn’t want to put their name next to any others. Or maybe my record was actually the worst and I wanted to make myself look good. Believe what you will.

So just in time for the first game of the Stanley Cup you can see who is predicting either the Hawks or Flyers and what their record has been this post-season. Here is another link to Dobber Hockey where you can see the same type of format for a group of writers. Very few sites made finding their predictions this easily. Maybe there’s a reason for that.

The first round is over and there are no doubt plenty of pundits weighing in on the second round, giving expert analysis on who is likely to advance and why (I will be one of these fools later today). But can you really trust these people? How did their predictions fare in the first round?

I think every time someone gives their predictions they should be forced to show their all-time record, or at the very least their record that season. So in honour of full disclosure I’m showing how my predictions fared in the first round. To make myself feel smart I’m comparing them to so-called hockey experts.

It’s hard to be overly excited about the success of my predictions considering there was very little difference between pundit choices. Everyone picked the Capitals, Penguins, Sharks, and Hawks to advance. Even the Montreal newspapers were picking the Capitals to walk away with the series. I checked both the Gazette (Montreal’s English newspaper) and La Presse (one of the city’s French papers) and only one writer had the guts to pick the Canadiens – Ronald King. I don’t know anything about him; maybe he has a history of mental illness.

Well, I guess he’s smarter than all of us because thanks to Boston and Montreal he went 7-1 with his predictions.

The series that had some difference of opinion (Devils-Flyers, Sabres-Bruins, Canucks-Kings, Wings-Coyotes) were still predominantly favouring the higher seed (except in the Wings series, but most people still picked them despite being the lower seed). There were only a few deviations from the norm here and there. For the most part everyone’s predictions looked very similar and the standings below reflect this. No one did terribly and no one was perfect (from what I could find).

That being said, my predictions put me in a tie for second place. PLAYOFFS! And for the record, I didn’t just search out the various predictions that would make me look good! In fact, I actively searched out someone who picked the Canadiens. This list is a pretty wide sampling of hockey writers from various media.

Here’s how everyone fared in the first round, including myself.