The Machine was humiliated a few months ago. After the fiasco of her prediction of the winner of the Soccer World Cup, Belgium, which came out without glory in the group stage, she wants to set the record straight. The NHL playoffs were the perfect opportunity.
The entire La Presse data science team behind the creation of the Machine therefore went back to the drawing board. For hours and hours, she analyzed, analyzed and overanalyzed 15 years of statistics. Zakaria Sassioui led the ambitious project. And so here are the predictions of the Machine de La Presse for the big winner of the Stanley Cup…
The Boston Bruins! Who will defeat the Vegas Golden Knights in the final.
With the last four: the Dallas Stars against the Golden Knights in the West and the New Jersey Devils against the Bruins in the East.
We note in passing some daring predictions, including the elimination of the formidable Edmonton Oilers in the first round. It also predicts that the Toronto Maple Leafs will finally get through the first round… before hitting their Waterloo against Boston.
And you, what do you think of the predictions of the Machine de La Presse?
“For the methodology, we extracted historical data since 2008 from the NHL.com website regarding each team’s performance in season games*. We cross-referenced this data with series results from the past 15 years to “train” the Machine.
“Our model trained on data from the last 15 seasons to learn how to predict the results of matches in the current season. Finally, we predicted the Stanley Cup results based on each team’s performance this season. Moreover, the end-of-season pace of the Knights and Stars seems to play a big role in the predictions as well. »
*Data used for model: