25 Sports Predictions for 2025

My biggest New Year’s Eve tradition that last 15 years has been posting my annual list of general sports predictions (leaning towards hockey), the early years of which revealed a curse on my annual Stanley Cup pick, starting with Crosby getting concussed at a Winter Classic on New Year’s Day when the Penguins were my pick. They were my pick for each of the first few years, but they always choked or had terrible misfortune. Then shortly after I stopped picking Pittsburgh, they won back-to-back Cups. One year I picked Washington and they choked, then won the next year. One year I picked St. Louis and they crashed, missing the playoffs entirely, but won soon thereafter.

With great power comes great responsibility. That’s why for the 6^th consecutive season, the Toronto Maple Leafs are my pick to win the Stanley Cup. Surely looking at Toronto’s last 5 playoffs, there can’t be anyone reading this who doubts my annual Cup pick is cursed. Speaking of curses, my Detroit Lions are second behind Kansas in Super Bowl odds, but I’m going to side with curses continuing their magic with the prediction that neither Bills or Lions win the championship. Buffalo is 3^rd in betting odds. I generally try to avoid predictions where my pick is the betting favorite, especially when they are a big favorite, because that feels like cheating.

If you’re a fan of movies, I help my nephew with a movie blog and we also do an annual predictions list. Though we’re both gradually losing interest in movies and the blog is mostly just predictions and awards. We may have to discontinue the awards because I didn’t watch enough movies this year, hockey consumes too much of my thinking time. The opportunity cost of tuning my mind into fictional worlds for hours per year is too high. I have been doing xx predictions for year 20xx since the inception of this list, and now at the quarter century mark, it’s getting harder to fill this out.

1. The Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup

2. Neither the Detroit Lions or Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl

3. The New York Yankees win the World Series

4. USA wins the 4-Nations Face-off

5. Maclin Celebrini wins Calder

6. Mikko Rantanen gets biggest contract of the remaining pending NHL free agents

7. Scott Arniel wins NHL Coach of the Year

8. Mitch Marner joins a new team

9. Both Pierre Laviolette and Chris Drury get fired

10. Both Kevyn Adams and Lindy Ruff get fired

11. New York Rangers miss the playoffs

12. New York Islanders hire a new General Manager

13. Either J.T Miller or Elias Pettersson gets traded

14. Mark Stone goes on LTIR until playoffs

15. Rory McIlroy wins a major

16. Tiger Woods plays in a PGA event

17. Tiger Woods cameos in Happy Gilmore 2

18. Oklahoma City Thunder win NBA championship

19. The United States loses the Ryder Cup

20. Conor McGregor does not win a sanctioned fight

21. Neither Alex Pereira or Jon Jones lose a fight

22. Leyla Fernandez advances to the final of a major tennis tournament

23. The Toronto Blue Jays don’t finish within 10 games of the wildcard

24. Shohei Ohtani leads MLB in home runs

25. Usyk does not lose a fight