NHL 24 Predicts This Year's Stanley Cup Winner

Will the Vancouver Canucks win it all this year?

By Marc Deschamps

The NHL playoffs have officially gotten underway, and the top 16 teams have started their competition to win the coveted Stanley Cup. We probably won't know who will hoist the trophy until early June, but EA Sports has simulated the match-ups between these teams, in an effort to predict which one will win it all. According to the game, the Vancouver Canucks will win the Stanley Cup this year, beating the Boston Bruins in a 7-game rematch of the 2011 finals between the two teams. If that does prove accurate, it would be the first Cup win in team history. 

A full breakdown of the simulation's results can be found in the image below. 

nhl-24-playoff-simulation.png
(Photo: EA, NHL)

How Does the Simulation Stack Up Against the Playoffs so Far?

The real Stanley Cup playoffs started yesterday, with Boston winning Game One against Toronto, and Carolina winning Game One against the Islanders. Both of those wins line up with the predictions made by NHL 24, which claims Boston will beat Toronto in 7 games, and Carolina will beat the Islanders in 6. The first round of the playoffs consists of 8 series in total, and the rest of the teams will have their first games later today or tomorrow. The first match between Vancouver and the Nashville Predators will take place tonight, so we should have a better idea soon how that series will actually play out. The simulation predicts a sweep in Vancouver's favor, which would be a pretty big deal! 

NHL 24's Pre-Season Predictions

This is not actually the first simulation NHL 24 has had for this year's Stanley Cup; immediately prior to the start of the NHL's 2023-2024 season, EA Sports revealed the results of a simulation predicting how the entire year would play out. Those results are interesting to look back at now that the actual playoffs are underway, because things didn't quite go the way the game predicted! That simulation had the Buffalo Sabres, St. Louis Blues, Pittsburgh Penguins, and New Jersey Devils all making the playoffs this year, and none of those teams actually managed to make the cut. In fact, that earlier simulation even predicted that the Devils would win it all this year, which would have been a first for then-head coach Lindy Ruff. Instead, the Devils missed the playoffs entirely, and Ruff is no longer with the organization. 

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Given how things played out this season, hockey fans should take any predictions made by NHL 24 with a grain of salt. These types of simulations are always fun to look at, because the reality is that sports are very hard to predict. At any point, a team might suffer a devastating injury, or a single goal could completely change the course of a series. 

Do you think this is going to be the year the Vancouver Canucks win it all? Did your team make the playoffs this year? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!

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