sporcle blog

Here are some early playoff predictions from the pundits, if you’re looking for some help in making your picks.

Salon: King Kaufman maps out the first round. He points out, rather correctly that the first round in the NBA is a fairly predictable affair, with the higher seeds winning an fairly substantial proportion of the time. Final winner? San Antonio Spurs, which was the same as his preseason choice.

ESPN: No predictions yet (they’ll probably come out sometime friday), but a Power Rankings…not that there are terribly helpful at predicting who wins, but it’s fun to make lists anyhow!

CBS Sportsline: Tony Mejia does a rundown on the Eastern Half of the first round brackets. He’s got New Jersey and Chicago pulling the upsets. Though can you call anybody an upset in the East?

The NBA season has finished, and between now and Saturday afternoon (April 21, 2007), you can come and make your NBA Playoff predictions. Will the Mavericks complete their dominant season with a NBA Championship, or will one of those other teams from the East win it all? You make the call, then invite your friends to show them you’re right.

Make your picks today!

Also, you can see what the prevailing opinion of all sporcle users is on the NBA playoff page.

As always, if you any comments or suggestions, please either post them here or use the feedback page.

The NHL playoffs have begun. If you look at each person’s picks on the group page, you’ll notice their pick, as well as the current status of that series. When the series is over, each winning/losing team will be highlighted green or red based on whether the pick was right or wrong. Also working on doing a ‘temporary score’ for each round, which will update the scores as if the series leader had won. That way you can see who’s doing best based on the current series status.

As usual, if you have any suggestions or comments, please either comment here or use the feedback page.

NBC Sports: I guess cause they show some of the later playoff games, they’ve gotten in to the picking game. Check out a few of their picks on a nice team icon based table. They even pick the studs of each round, if you’re into that kind of thing.

TSN ca: Maggie the Monkey makes her first round picks, and compares them to the TSN hockey crew. Other than Minnesota, it appears Maggie likes the favorites in round one.

ESPN: First round predictions from their hockey crew. Couple of them have the Flames winning the first round. Without trying to be too partial…should have been the Avalanche here instead of Calgary.

SI: Their NHL experts pick them all the way through. Have to navigate down a little to see all their results. A clean sweep for Buffalo in the east.

Well, just like baseball, we’ll be putting the various playoff predictions we find into their own Pundit group. Here’s some various picks from around this big world wide web (or ‘information superhighway for you old-schoolers).

…Because I love sports: A fairly in-depth prediction of the first round games. Nick has only done the first round games because of the reseeding in the subsequent rounds. A good read regardless.

ESPN: John Buccigross has a good article on the NHL playoffs, as well as first round games rundown. He’s attributing heart to picking the Sharks over the Predators, and Jagr as the key for the Rangers to overcome the favored Thrashers. You can also check out their final regular season power rankings, if you’re like that.

Deadspin: Ok, so they only pick the east/west conference winners, but you’ll find a whole lot of chattering in the comments. With luck, they’ll talk a bit more about hockey going forward.

More to come…

The NHL Playoffs are set, the conference rankings are as follows:

The playoffs start on wednesday, so between now and then, you can come to sporcle.com to make your predictions for the race for the Stanley Cup. You can then invite all your hockey loving friends and smack talk your way to the top.

We’ve added a new ‘Pundit’s Group‘ for the MLB picks, so you can easily compare yourself against the typists and chatters around the TV, print and web. You’ll find a link to the pundit group on the Group page. Also, if you are a registered user of sporcle.com, you’ll be able to add smack talk to the pundit group, to discuss and/or skewer the picks of all those people you read and see on TV.

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Sports Illustrated: Here’s a rundown of the picks of some of their columnists. Seems to be a lot more Yankees love over at SI than there is at ESPN.

CBS Sportsline: A very pretty team icon based prediction table from the baseball folk over at CBS Sportline.

Found a few more, a heavy hitter and some bloggers

ESPN: A full rundown of most of their sports writers, from the Magazine, TV and online. ESPN pundits always have an opinion….it’s interesting how infrequently they turn out to be right.

HittingBack.com: This is the final prediction post, wrapping up the major baseball awards and the playoffs. Go back a few articles to find his AL and NL divisional rundowns.

Working Life blog: I don’t think I’ve yet see anyone pick the Twins to win it all. And this coming from a guy who’s got Yankee tickets on Opening (2nd) Day.

I’m sure there will be more tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Well, Opening Day 2007 is finally here. Isn’t it a little odd that opening day in baseball only has one game? I guess the idea is to create a pomp and circumstance situation for the one game, and I realize it’s meant to be a special matchup, but has baseball really started if only 2 teams are playing? I personally believe baseball doesn’t start until tomorrow when we really get to see the tar hit the pine.

As for sporcle.com, we’ve decided to extend the time for people to make their 2007 MLB predictions out a week. We figure not much happens the first week, and with 162 games and all, it’s unlikely that there will much to learn in the first games that you didn’t already know from cactus and grapefruit ball. So, full points can still be gotten by picking until next sunday, April 8th. Feel free to make changes, and make sure you invite any of your baseball friends you can’t wait to prove wrong (or right?).

As always, comment either here or at the feedback form.