The NHL playoffs are back, or will be in a few days. And that means it’s time for the annual playoff prediction contest, an incredibly simple single-question test that you will almost certainly fail.

We tried this last year, and readers seemed to enjoy it. A few of you even did reasonably well. But there were not many, and that was in a year when the postseason didn’t serve up many surprises. Let’s see how things go this time around.

All you need to do is leave a comment below with your answer to our single catch-all question.

The question

Here’s the only question that you’ll be answering:

List as many or as few playoff teams as you’d like, in order of how many games they will win during the 2025 postseason, from most wins to fewest.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do.

The winner will be the correct answer that lists the most teams. To make things even easier, ties between teams that win the same number of games will be counted as correct.

How hard can it be, right?

The examples

Using last year’s playoffs as an example, if your entry had looked like this:

Panthers, Stars, Avalanche, Bruins, Maple Leafs, Predators, Capitals

… then you’d have been correct. The Panthers won 16 games, the Stars had 10, the Avalanche and Bruins both won six so they work in any order, the Leafs had three, the Preds had two and the Caps had zero. You’d have scored seven teams, which would have been very impressive (although not good enough to win).

But if you’d instead posted this very similar entry:

Panthers, Stars, Avalanche, Bruins, Islanders, Predators, Capitals

… then it would have been wrong. The Islanders won just one playoff game, which is fewer than the Predators’ two. You’d have been close, but in this contest, close doesn’t matter. It’s all or nothing.

The strategy

In theory, listing just a single team guarantees a right answer, but you won’t win that way. Conversely, listing all 16 teams correctly would all but guarantee a win, but it would also be pretty much impossible. So where’s the sweet spot? I have no idea, which is part of what makes this fun.

Unlike last time, when the contest was brand new and we didn’t really know how anyone would approach it, we now have one year of experience to look back on. And honestly, you guys did better than expected. The winning entry featured eight teams, which was higher than I thought would be realistic.

So what happened? Basically, last year’s playoffs didn’t feature any major upsets, and maybe even no upsets at all depending on which sets of odds you were relying on. And despite that, you guys still didn’t exactly do great. (Seriously, Tanner, what were you doing?)

Will the hockey gods stick to the expected again this year? Maybe! Will it make you all overconfident, leading to a lot of you using too many teams and getting embarrassed as a result? We sure hope so.

The rules

In the (likely) event of a tie, the winner will be whichever entry uses teams that rack up the most total wins. If it’s still tied, the win will go to whoever’s entry was posted first.

One entry per person.

The cutoff for entries is the advertised start time of the first game of the 2025 postseason.

The prize is a signed copy of my book if you want one, but really this is about bragging rights and the knowledge that you’re smarter than everyone else.

How to enter

Post your answer in the comment section below. List as many or as few teams as you’d like, all on one line, separated by commas. (That part is important when it comes to automatically scraping the replies.)

Please also pay attention to spelling. Man, some of you are bad at this part.

Basically, we’ll do our best to parse all the entries, but if you get weird with your spelling or you don’t use commas, we can’t guarantee you’ll be counted.

(Also, don’t get cute with team names. We’ll try to scrape everything and then parse it so “Tampa Bay” and “Lightning” count as the same answer, but if you’re one of those weirdos who says “Bolts” then you may be out of luck.)

Let’s do this

Entries are now open, so hit the comment section when you’re ready to stake your claim. Remember, list all your teams in order (from most wins to fewest) and separated by commas.

(Photo of the original Stanley Cup in the Hockey Hall of Fame: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)