Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

EA Sports’ NHL 12 simulation predicts a Penguins Stanley Cup victory in June

EA Sports NHL 12 Cup winners

There’s no such thing as an honest fortune teller. Most of the ones you’ll run into are like the one from “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” there to empty your wallet like Pee-Wee Herman telling you to find your missing bike in a non-existent basement in the Alamo. The NHL has something that’s actually worked out pretty well though when figuring who just might skate away with the Stanley Cup at the end of the season.

EA Sports’ NHL series of video games have done a remarkably accurate job of picking the winners and finalists over the last few years and they’re at it again with their NHL 12 series this year. This time around, EA Sports’ simulation has the Pittsburgh Penguins beating the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup finals and captain Sidney Crosby skating with the Cup for the second time in his career.

In the previous two seasons, EA’s simulation correctly predicted the Blackhawks would win the Cup in 2010 and correctly picked out that the Canucks and Bruins would face off in the finals last year. Never mind that they had the Canucks winning in seven games, picking out the finalists is pretty good on its own. As for their other projections via video game, EA has some other fun to compare to at the end of the season.

The highlights include:


  • Toronto and Minnesota making the playoffs as the eighth seeds.
  • Sidney Crosby missing 17 regular season games and still finishing 7th in scoring in the league.
  • Alex Ovechkin scores 51 goals and wins the Hart Trophy
  • Steve Stamkos scores 53 and wins the Rocket Richard Trophy
  • Buffalo edges out Boston for the Northeast Division title
  • Florida finishes as the worst team in the league

While those projections might be a bit more far-fetched, their finals predictions have been some degree of money the last two years. We won’t lie, it’d make for a hell of a story to see Crosby bounce back after what he’s dealt with to win the Cup this year. Doing it in Chicago with all the moves they’ve made would only amp up the drama scale to about “eleventy billion” on a scale of 1-10.

What do you think though? Can we trust SkyNet a video game to give us what we’ll see at the end of the year?

(Photo: EA Sports)