Some pundits, fans or random strangers in bars are sure they know in advance who will win the first-round playoff series between the Leafs and the Senators. How do you figure it out more effectively than just going with an emotional take? There are several methods to get the answer, and I'm going to cover them here.

Method 1 – Consult your local Eeyore

It would be so Leafy if the Sens won the first round. This is why we can't have nice things. The Leafiest would be if they got swept. No, even Leafier would be four shutouts.

Variation on Method 1: the bitter and angry Leafs fan:

The Leafs just haven't got it, they fold in the playoffs. This team needs a tear down – trade everyone and start over. You can't win with four players making that much, it's obvious, and the stupid GM is stupid and should be fired. At least Craig Berube will be fired. I like when people are fired. [Editor's note: large amounts of profanity were removed in transcription]

Method 2 – Consult an Ottawa fan

See the Method 1 variation, only with a lot more "LOL, you suck" worked in. It's essentially the same arguments.

Method 3 – Consult a sports radio show

Uh... you're on your own here. I listened to part of Overdrive once this year because Pierre LeBrun was explaining something interesting, and then they shouted about Mitch Marner's contract for 10 minutes.

Method 4 – Corsi

Find some season data, dump it into Tableau and produce a chart coloured jaunty blue for good and angry red for bad and find your answer. You can do Corsi or Expected Goals or even Corsi Close for that 2013 vibe. Never give a thought to your binary colour scheme.

Method 5 – Head-to-Head results

Find the season series results and look deep at the stats of the three games all added together. You can use the Tableau good/bad colours described in Method 4, or do several measures to determine who will win the series. Focus on points.

Method 6 – Line vs Line

Not nearly as funny as Spy vs Spy, this is a technique where you figure out (guess) who will play on each line for each team in the playoffs and compare them one on one. Special emphasis on the fourth line is important here. Glossing over that home-ice advantage only gives Berube one extra go with the last change, and that lines don't actually just play against their opposite number, you can take a fun thought exercise and take it deadly seriously.

Method 7 – Calculate the odds

Come up with your own method. For the right vibe, sketch it out on the back of an actual envelope. Try not to be too surprised when you get the answer you expected going in.

Method 8 – Look up the odds

All that sports gambling impoverishing children and ruining lives finally pays off! You can just look up the odds online in seconds. (Don't use betting odds, they aren't actually win probabilities. {If you didn't know that, don't ever gamble.})

I am going to do Method 8 in a second here, and I am not going to do a head-to-head analysis or line vs line. Those are fun in their way, but they have no real descriptive or predictive value. These thought exercises have some descriptive value of the past, and if I see a good one elsewhere, we'll link that, but this is the crux of the matter: there is no crystal ball that works. No one can tell you who will win. All you can get is probability.

Probability at election time is always a fraught conversation. Even though I understand why there is so much anger and anti-science disbelief about things like polling and the resultant electoral models, it's still frustrating to be told that such and such a model can't be right because this complex set of events happen only to the Leafs in such a way that the Leafs are actually really bad and they will lose. It's the "they only call landlines" version of hockey denialism.

Probability isn't destiny, however, all it is is a hint of what may be, not a picture of what will be. I'm not looking up the exact quote from A Christmas Carol this year, but I've used it every playoffs for ages. That story is an excellent examination of cause and effect and also a representation of the multiple universes idea of the future.

I put it this way, stolen wholesale from a favourite author of mine: if you desire a certain outcome, you have to be willing to make that choices that will lead to that outcome. What we don't actually know, no matter how firmly opinions get stated, is if the right choices have been made.

Recognizing that you control your own destiny is good as far as it goes. You do have to play the games after all. But you don't absolutely control your future. In this case, the Senators get a say. And the bouncing puck of fortune always holds some sway in any hockey game. Corsi in the past, remember, is predictive of future success over a number of games a lot larger than 4-7. Larger than 8-14. Larger than 12-21. Low scoring games are full of random events pushing and pulling at the destiny the players are trying to create out of all their freedom of choice.

Some years back in one of the Boston series, there were two models that had the series within a few hundredths of a percentage point of 50/50. Boston won in game 7. This event, and the relentless first-round exits where the Leafs have never won a series [yes, I know, but it's like it never happened] has led to a meme that all playoff series are "coinflips". This is completely untrue.

There is a lot of randomness in hockey outcomes. That doesn't mean randomness decides every game. Or even most games. There is more randomness in a playoff series than there in an 82-game season. That doesn't mean it's all random.

The players matter, the system matters, the goalie matters. It's all important. And no one can tell you now who will win. This is, of course, the most unsatisfying of things to hear. I'm supposed to take a stand on this and pretend while doing so that I'm not just bullshitting.

And everyone else? Well, what they do in large numbers is take a percentage and convert that to a solid prediction. For some angry souls, that 50/50 converted in their head to "Leafs will win" and when they didn't, well polls are wrong. The more even-tempered are just as inclined to take a number they consider high and convert it to "Leafs will win for sure". Even if you know people tend do this, and that's it's the wrong way to process a probability, you'll do it anyway, it's nearly impossible to resist.

If the forecast is 60% chance of rain, are you expecting it to rain for sure? What about 70%? You likely have a number where you tip over into astonishment if it doesn't rain. Weather forecasts – widely derided for failing the test of perfection – are the most accurate predictive models we encounter in our daily lives. But because of what we do with probabilities in our heads, we find them wrong so often that they can't ever be trusted.

Where's your number with the Leafs? Where to you tip over into certainty? Deep down, no one really does feel certain. The "It's so Leafy" crowd who are trying to repudiate the unknowable future or the people turning some percentage into a sure thing are all still going to watch the games. Because there is no winner until all the games are played.

The Odds

Moneypuck says it's 60 - 40 for the Leafs. Ottawa has the best chance of an upset of all the wild card teams by their model. Do we need a deep analysis to figure that out? I don't think so. I think they're obviously better than the other three, with the possible exception of the Wild. But Moneypuck's model looks at the specific matchup in a way you and your envelope aren't going to compete with. I'm not going to try. Why keep a dog and bark yourself as the saying goes.

Another view:

Look at it this way, in a world of uncertainty, we will know the winner of this series by May 3 at the latest.