Two months ago, we started with a full field of championship hopefuls. Some knew they were facing long odds, but were willing to dream big dreams. Others were bathed in the soothing safety of favorite status. But they all had one thing in common: The abiding belief that this could be their year.

Then the playoffs started, and it all went downhill.

I’m referring, of course, to our annual playoff contest, in which I ask one simple question and almost all of you get it wrong. It launched a few days before the playoffs started, and over 850 of you entered.

How many of those entries are still alive and in the running for the title? Um … two.

Yes, we’ve got ourselves a Stanley Cup Final showdown. We’ll get to that in a second. But first, a quick refresher for those who missed the contest post.

The contest features just one question: List as many or as few playoff teams as you’d like, in order of how many games you think they’ll win during the postseason, from most to fewest. That’s it. The correct answer featuring the most teams wins; the tie-breaker is total games won by all of an entry’s teams. Nice and easy, but with some obvious strategic considerations to navigate. How confident are you? How risky are you willing to get?

The contest debuted in 2024, when the winning entry featured eight teams and was submitted by Sean M., who tragically was not me. Last year, the magic number was eight teams yet again, with Guarav A. narrowly beating out Tony D. based on the Stanley Cup Final result.

After two straight wins, could an eight-team entry be the optimal strategy once again? Spoiler: Nope. Much like the Panthers, the eight-teamers didn’t come all that close to pulling off the threepeat.

We’ll get to that. Let’s dive into the details and see how everyone did.

The numbers

We’ll start with the basics. There were 854 entries in this year’s contest. With 14 series down and one still to go, here’s how you’re doing.

Playoff contest results (so far)

RightStill in playWrongTotal

Entries

26

5

823

854

That’s … not great!

Which, of course, is the point. The contest is designed to be simple to enter, but almost impossible to nail. And with the playoffs still in progress, we’re already looking at a failure rate north of 96 percent.

It’s actually worse than it looks. Of the 26 entries that are already locked into a correct answer, well over half — 17 in all — got there by picking just one team. Yes, these are the readers who went looking for a cheat code, trying to run an end-around on the strategic considerations and steal a cheap win. It’s actually a pretty reasonable strategy — bank a guaranteed “correct” answer, hope that a chaotic spring takes everyone else out, and try to coast home on the total wins tie-breaker. People try it every year. It never works, but I can see the vision.

Among the only slightly braver, four more correct entries listed two teams. Two more had three, and two more had four. In other words, 24 of the 26 correct answers so far were either cowardly or at least coward-adjacent.

That leaves us with two entries worth highlighting. Michelle B. listed five teams: Colorado, Tampa Bay, Edmonton, Dallas and Boston. Only one of those teams made it out of the first round, but because ties count as correct, Michelle nailed her order. She’s home and cooled out with a correct five-team entry, just one back of Jacob B. and his similar six-teamer of Colorado, Tampa Bay, Edmonton, Pittsburgh, Dallas and Los Angeles.

Congrats to both Michelle and Jacob. Neither of you is going to win, as we’ll see in a bit. But you’re among the 3 percent or so of entrants who’ll be able to say you weren’t wrong. And you didn’t have to resort to the coward’s gambit to do it.

Speaking of which, there’s one more “correct” entry we have to single out. Jesse O. submitted an entry that listed just two teams: Ottawa and Toronto. You can see what’s going on here — presumably, Jesse is a Senators fan who was having a bit of fun with his provincial rivals. We could have disqualified him for listing a team that didn’t make the playoffs, but instead, we just counted it as a one-team entry. And since Jesse’s one team got swept in the first round, that means he becomes the first entry in the history of the contest to ever score a zero in the “total wins” column. Congratulations on the playoff goose egg, Jesse. Your captain would be proud.

The consensus

This is where we go looking for any kind of wisdom of the crowd.

To nobody’s surprise, the most common number of teams picked was eight, the same total that’s won each of the last contests. There were 224 of you, well ahead of the 145 who picked seven teams and the 114 who went with nine. If you’re wondering, there were 78 entries that took the biggest swing possible and listed 16 teams; none of them came remotely close to being right, but I respect the attempt.

It’s always fun to see which teams show up the most often in different ends of readers’ lists. For example, the team that was listed last most often — which is to say the team you were most confident would not win many playoff games — was the Kings. No surprise there. But the next two most hopeless teams, according to you, were the Ducks and Flyers, who each won a round.

At the other end, the Avalanche ran away with the crown for showing up as the first team on the most lists. Listing a team first isn’t quite the same as making them your Cup pick, but it means you think they’re going to win a lot of games. Is eight games a lot? Not for a powerhouse like the Avs, unfortunately. And your second pick was the Lightning, because apparently, you all don’t learn from your mistakes.

By the way, the Ducks and Flyers are notable in this category as well — not a single entry listed either team first, an honor also earned by the Mammoth. How disrespectful is that? Put it this way: That puts those teams behind the Canucks, who batted leadoff in a “Vancouver, Colorado, Montreal, Dallas, Carolina” entry by an apparently confused reader named Connor R. Good job, good effort, Connor.

And finally, if we just look at which teams were mentioned at all — which is to say, which teams did people feel confident enough to include in their entry somewhere — we get the Avs on top, showing up 726 times. That was comfortably ahead of Carolina (633), Tampa (575), Edmonton (566) and Buffalo (500). The least-mentioned team, which likely means the team that confused everyone the most, was the Bruins. NHL prediction contests and not understanding the Bruins, name a more iconic duo.

OK, the numbers are fun and all, but you want to know who’s going to win. The short answer: Not you. For the longer answer, we need one more section

The contenders

So let’s talk about those five entries that are still in play.

Three of them can’t win because they listed fewer teams than clubhouse leader Jacob B. That includes a pair of four-team entries, from Garret E. (Carolina, Vegas, Edmonton, Los Angeles) and Aj B. (Carolina, Colorado, Buffalo, Anaheim), as well as a five-teamer from James S. (Carolina, Tampa Bay, Edmonton, Boston, Pittsburgh). Nice work, but a little too conservative. As a wise man once said, “Safe is death.”

And that brings us to our two contenders. This year’s winner will be a seven-team entry. We’re just not sure which one yet.

Our first candidate is Karl K., whose entry looked like this: Carolina, Vegas, Montreal, Anaheim, Philadelphia, Boston and Los Angeles. That’s pretty much exactly the sort of entry we’re looking for in this contest — Karl nailed both the finalists, one conference finalist, two second-rounders and two first-round exits. If you look closely, you’ll see that Karl doesn’t even need any help from our generous “ties count as right answers” rule — he’s got some nice separation between each of his teams.

Karl’s problem is that he needs Carolina to beat Vegas in the final for his entry to seal the deal. If that happens, he’ll win the contest, and deservedly so. But if not, Karl’s entry will join the 96 percent in the smoldering pile of wrong answers. Much like the playoffs themselves, there are no points for just coming close here, even if maybe there should be.

So what happens if Vegas wins? For that answer, we turn to David R., whose seven-team entry came in like this: Carolina, Colorado, Buffalo, Edmonton, Dallas, Utah, Boston. Unlike Karl, David is letting the tie rule do some heavy lifting here, as his entry features four teams that each won exactly two games. In fact, while I can’t claim to be a mind-reader, I think it’s reasonably safe to infer that David was going for a Carolina/Colorado final here, maybe one that went through Buffalo and Edmonton in the conference final.

In other words, David was pretty wrong about things. But he managed to be wrong in exactly the right way, so he’s still alive. And he can win it all — if the Cup ends up in Vegas, a team that wasn’t even part of his entry at all.

David sure seems to have been picking a Carolina championship, and now his shot at winning depends on them falling short. I’ll be honest … I kind of love that. A David win would be the ultimate “task failed successfully” story, which feels just about perfect for the chaos of the NHL playoffs.

David wins the contest if Vegas wins the Cup. Karl is our champion if the Hurricanes get it done.

And you? You tried hard and had fun. Hey, there’s always next year.