Predicting the outcome of each game in the comments is a fun part of every Morning Skate thread here on WIIM. Well this year, we brought back the predictions contest so you can all put meaningless internet points where your mouth is. Believe it or not, we’re already a quarter of the way into the 2015-16 season, so now seems like a good time to give a little update on the contest. This update is only going to include the first 20 games, so the victory in St. Louis won’t be counted. As a reminder, the points are awarded as such: 1pt for picking the correct team, 2pts for the correct POTG, 5pts for the correct score (regardless of who actually wins), and 15pts for getting all three.
How are the numbers looking so far?
As you might expect, there are a lot more points given out when the Red Wings win, since just about everyone picks the guys in red and white to be victorious. The game in which the most points were handed out was the third game of the season against Tampa Bay with an astounding 265 points between 122 guesses! I still haven’t seen as many guesses get all three parts of the prediction right as I did for this game – five commenters were awarded the full 15 points for picking the Wings in a 3-1 victory with Howard as the POTG.
The fewest points given out for a single game was the one against Dallas, which isn’t surprising considering how many points are lost when the Wings do. Only 46 guesses were made, and a measly 23 points were awarded. Yikes. On that note, the losses are my least favorite to score because of how many times I have to hit the ‘0’ key running through the spreadsheet. Booooring.
How many people are making these silly predictions anyway?
It might not be surprising to hear that participation has declined since the first few games of the season. Game 1 against the hapless Leafs introduced the shiny new contest format and is still far and away the most-predicted game, with 161 guesses made. The least-predicted? October 31 against Ottawa. I suppose everyone was busy making their final Halloween preparations, except for the 27 that put in a guess.
I did notice that participation was up when the game is on a weekday; all Saturdays and the one Sunday game so far this year have been consistently less-guessed. Don’t worry, I won’t tell any of your bosses on you that you’re making hockey predictions on the clock! I’d have to make a lot of phone calls anyway, since as of this update there have been 313 (yes, really!) unique guessers among our dear readers. Some have been one-and-dones, possibly fans of opposing teams that have jumped in on all the fun we have here, or maybe they’re Wings fans who stumbled across WIIM for the very first time and are too shy to come back. Which, don’t be shy! There’s plenty of awesome to go around.
Speaking of awesome, there are four faithful among you that made predictions in all 20 games: beer league arbitration, Snuke, Tinywings, and wingingintherain! Keep it up, and the rest of you, step it up, because those points aren’t going to win themselves if you aren’t making guesses!
And now for the part of this update I know you’ve all been waiting for – the current frontrunner. That honor currently goes to… *drumroll*
rsizzle!
rsizzle! is leading the way with 47 points, bolstered by being one of the five to get 15 points in that first Tampa game and only going points-less in four of the 18 games they made predictions. Awesome job!
Second place is wingingintherain, with an also-impressive 39 points in 20 games. Then we have a three-way tie for third place between Hockey Hubby, old man hockey, and Toady, all with 32 points.
Remember, it’s not too late to get in on the predicting fun this season! There’s no historical cutoff at Thanksgiving in this contest, and you could make some real noise with just a few spot-on guesses. So go forth and get those fingers a-typin’ because there is internet fame and glory on the line here!
