TSN, one of Canada’s sports networks, had its panel of experts choose which teams will advance from the round of 16 in the NHL playoffs. For the second (at least) year in a row, they’ve welcomed another hominid into their prediction pool: Maggie the macaque (go here if you don’t know what a macaque is, and get out of the house more). I didn’t actually see her make her predictions tonight, but last year she spun a wheel to choose the winners from each series. While I don’t think she did very well last year all round, she was the only biped on the planet that fingered the Anaheim Mighty Ducks to go through to the final.
I applaud the folks at TSN who are self-deprecatory enough to let the monkey in on the action. I think it’s a win-win scenario–if the experts out-pick the monkey, then they can take pride in their superiority. If the macaque beats them, then they can point to the parity around the league and extreme difficulty in choosing winners.
In the interests of full disclosure, here are my picks for the first round. Hopefully I beat the monkey (you keep your dirty comments to yourselves):
TB v NYI: Tampa Bay in 5
MTL v BOS: Boston in 7
PHI v NJ: New Jersey in 7
OTT v TOR: Toronto in 5
DET v NSH: Detroit in 5
SJ v STL: San Jose in 4
VAN v CAL: Vancouver in 6
COL v DAL: Colorado in 7
DarrenBarefoot.com 
San Jose in 4.. brave pick. Do you think it’s the Osgood factor or the lack of MacInnes/Jackman factor?
Well, I felt that I had to pick a sweep, and that seemed the likeliest case. St. Louis looks pretty old and busted to me, and their depth on defence is seriously questionable. After Pronger, they haven’t got much.