EA Sports has come up with quite the publicity stunt, and an incredible way to market its latest entry in its hockey franchise, NHL 13. Since we will be without a real hockey season this year, the folks at Electronic Arts have decided to simulate the entire NHL season using real-world stats, players, and teams, to (sort of) predict who would have won the Stanley Cup, if it was being given out.
Each year, EA predicts the Super Bowl winner with remarkable accuracy. In fact, they’ve correctly estimated seven of nine Super Bowl champions, usually with very low score deltas as well.
This year, it’ll be interesting to see how the NHL games play out in the pre-season and during playoffs. Will the Toronto Maple Leafs finally win? Probably not, but it is always fun to see how things would play out. Of course, there is no way to ever know how close the simulation would be to the real thing, as there are a ton of different variances, the main one being human choice.
The simulation is even set to track potential injuries, probably based on a random generation of sorts to add a bit of a spin to the results.
Of course, without a hockey season in play for real, EA Sports is sure to get some attention as they play out a very real sport in a not-so-real way to let fans hold on to the game they love.
You can check the results every week by heading to EA Sports’s NHL 13 site, and be sure to peep the results from week one below.