Prediction (NHL '95): The 2008 Stanley Cup winner is...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm about to make a bold prediction. Your 2008 Stanley Cup winner will be the Pittsburgh Penguins who will win in 7.

Granted, I know at this point the series currently stands 3-2 in favor of the Detroit Red Wings, so there's a much greater chance I'm right about this than I would have been at the beginning of the series, but there is a method to my madness - science is backing me up on this one. My method was simple: have a computer simulate the game of hockey and determine the winner. That should be a fair and accurate way of determining who the best team in hockey is in 2008, yes?

To do this, I fired up NHL '95 for the Sega Genesis and set out to have the Pittsburgh Penguins host the Detroit Red Wings (Game 6), and if needed the Red Wings host the Penguins (Game 7). The results are below as well as some highlights of the games.

Not now, John Shrader. Please get off-camera... IT'S STANLEY CUP HOCKEY TIME!
Game 6:

Game 6 saw a lot of penalties, possibly because the referees had nothing better to do. Overall, players from both teams were using all of their 10 frames of animation very nicely and were able to pull off such complex maneuvers worthy of professional hockey such as "skate left", "carry puck", "check" and my favorite "shoot puck". Detroit 2, Pittsburgh 4.

Scoring Summary -

• 1st period, PIT PP goal, #17 T. Sandstrom (R. Tocchet)
• 1st period, PIT goal, #7 J. Mullen
• 1st period, PIT goal, #32 P. Taglianeti
• 2nd period, PIT goal, #66 M. Lemieux (J. Jagr)
• 3rd period, DET goal, #19 S. Yzerman (R. Sheppard)
• 3rd period, DET goal, #16 V. Konstantov

Game 7:

Pittsburgh's win pushed the Stanley Cup finals to Game 7, where it was a hard fought game most of the way through. The virtual crowd was going wild, right up until they realized the game was pretty much over and shuffled out to their virtual cars so they could avoid the virtual traffic. Pittsburgh 5, Detroit 2.

Scoring Summary -

• 1st period, PIT goal, #68 J. Jagr
• 1st period, PIT goal, #25 K. Stevens (M. Lemieux, L. Murphy)
• 1st period, PIT goal, #66 M. Lemieux (K. Stevens)
• 2nd period, DET goal, #19 S. Yzerman (K. Primeau)
• 3rd period, DET goal, #22 D. Ciccarelli
• 3rd period, PIT goal, #25 K. Stevents (K. Samuelsson, T. Barrasso)
• 3rd period, PIT goal, #10 R. Francis

Highlights of the games:


These highlights brought to you in HD (where available)