Every preseason the NHL holds it's annual Psychic Fair, where all the pundits, prognosticators, number crunchers, model makers and wild-ass guessers tell you what your team's life will be like in the coming season.

Will they find true love with that draft pick?  Will they have an exciting career change and actually make the playoffs?  Or will there be tragedy and hardship to overcome?

Let's take a trip through this year's fair.  I'll show you around, and the secret future of the Toronto Maple Leafs will be revealed.

USA Today

The first booth looks very glitzy with gold silk draperies and big illuminated sign.  We know they have money to spend, but does that make their predictions any better?  Let’s have a look inside.

That’s not very encouraging!

For reference, last year the Leafs finished last with 29 wins, 42 losses and 11 fruitless tries at overtime or shootouts.  They had 69 points.

USA Today is forecasting that they will have two fewer regulation losses and two more in OT.  That seems a little unlikely.  I'm not sure about their psychic abilities at all.  They do have Chicago winning the Central Division as well, and while that probably made a lot of readers happy, I’m not sure how likely that is either.

Hockeyviz

Next we move to a neat and tidy looking park bench with one young man with a whiteboard and a lot of coloured markers.

Once you relax and let the colours wash over you, tinting your brain that lovely purple, you realize that these predictions recognize the inexact nature of the future.  While the USA Today numbers could have been carved in stone, these are more nuanced.

[T]he short version is that I consider offence and defence, shooting and goaltending results, special teams, penalties drawn and taken, rest, and home ice advantage. Injuries, suspensions, and all off-season moves are included.

For the Leafs the range of possibilities lies between ~70 and ~105 points, with the darker sections in the centre representing the most likely results.  The mean is 87.8 points, which would be a substantial improvement over last year, and would require up to 10 more wins, or a lot more consolation points from overtime.

Now you’re smiling, and you leave the bench buoyed up with a little more hope.

NHL17

The next booth is a little surprising.  It's a small blue box, but when you step inside, you are suddenly in an NHL arena and a game is underway.  It takes you a moment to see it, but eventually you realize the players look a little strange, almost cartoonish.  None of this is real!

Well now, that's more like it!  91 points and a wildcard spot into the playoffs.  Whoo hooo!  Now, one small problem, is that our last psychic predicted 94 points as too few to make the playoffs out of the Atlantic, so maybe this is from some parallel universe?

Maybe we travelled someway other than just in time and space when we stepped into the blue box.  It can happen.  We should get out now before we discover we've spent our whole lives here watching almost realistic NHL hockey that turns out to have been played by robots or something.

The Hockey News

The next booth looks like an old newsroom from a seventies TV show.  I expect Lou Grant to come storming in at any moment.

On one side is a wall chart covered in numbers and on the other side is a table covered in empty coffee cups with a bunch of guys who all need haircuts sitting around it and arguing.

"Which team do you want?" A voice calls out.

When you tell them you want the Leafs predictions the wall chart displays this set of numbers:

Immediately the guys around the table start disputing the conclusions and claim the Leafs will finish last in the Atlantic not seventh.  The argument goes on and on, and eventually you tune them out.

The chart shows a range of possible points results centred on 84.  That would still represent an improvement, and even the arguing ink-stained wretches think the Leafs will be better.   They’re just arguing about how much better.

You leave here with your hopes intact.

Tip of the Tower

The next booth on our rounds is just one guy scratching out notes on the back of an envelope.  But don't let the low-tech method fool you; the ideas seem sound.

When you look at his notes, you see that he first estimates wins, and comes up with a total of 83 points based on a modest improvement of seven more successful games.

This is regression.  It's estimated, guessed at, but it is an application of regression—primarily on the goaltending—to last year's results.

You leave that booth thinking that all in all, the Leafs might not be totally horrible this year.

Conclusion

And now you've gone through the whole fair, and you're left with me.  I looked at the whole division and rated the teams against themselves and each other in a way not much more sophisticated than our envelope scratcher.

I came up with the Leafs second last in the division, and in other places, I've said somewhere around 23rd or 24th in the league.  I think that's reasonable and would involve an improvement in wins of around 5 to 10 and a points total somewhere in the neighbourhood of 85.  If you leave out the alternate universe of NHL17 and the questionable guesses from USA Today, we all seem to agree on a similar number.

So now that you're fully convinced that the future is predictable and randomness is quantifiable, can I interest you in some games of chance?  The midway is just this way.  Bring a calculator if you like.  And your wallet.