Now that we’re a few days into July, it’s time to answer two equally important questions: Which cap-flush teams handed out the most outrageously expensive contracts to mid-level players, and how’d everyone do in the annual prediction contest?If you’re new to all of this, let’s get you caught up. Every year, right before the season starts, we run a reader contest in which you’re invited to make predictions about what will and won’t happen in the coming season. The questions are simple, but this league sure isn’t, and most years everyone does terribly. We track the contest all year long, and at the end, we all point and laugh at each other for thinking we knew anything.That day has come, with July 1 representing the end of the league year and the official finish line for the contest. Pencils down, everyone, it’s time to turn in your papers.If you missed them, the original contest post is here, a first look at the entries was here and our midseason check-in came here.The basic idea is there are ten main questions, for which you can submit as many or as few answers as you’d like, up to five. You get more points for more answers, but getting even one wrong zeroes your score for that question, so there’s a real risk/reward balance that forces you to figure out just how confident you are.Most of you were very confident. Most of you were very wrong for that.As always, a huge thanks goes out to Mike M., who scrapes your answers, mashes them into something workable, and maintains the contest’s backend site all season long. If you enjoy the contest, drop a thanks to Mike in the comments.Let’s walk through the questions and see how you did. We had over 1,100 entries, so surely somebody nailed this thing.Who are the top five NHL players to hit free agency?1. Name up to five teams that will make the playoffs.Just about everyone got off to a good start here, with each of your six most mentioned teams making it. That list includes the Dallas Stars, Carolina Hurricanes, Vegas Golden Knights, Edmonton Oilers, Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning, and while the two Pacific teams took a bit longer than expected, everyone eventually wrapped up their spot.After six straight right answers, you then reeled off five in a row that were wrong, with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers, Winnipeg Jets, New Jersey Devils and Washington Capitals coming next. But those teams were all well below the big six, meaning there were plenty of five-for-five starts here.This contest is easy!2. Name up to five teams that will not make the playoffs.Oops!The good news here is that the two teams that were on almost everyone’s list, the Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks, did miss, although the Sharks kept it interesting. But the third-most-mentioned team, appearing on over 800 entries, was the Pittsburgh Penguins. And if you dodged that trap, there’s a good chance you were tripped up by the Philadelphia Flyers (who appeared on the 5th-most entries), Buffalo Sabres (7th), Boston Bruins (8th) or Anaheim Ducks (10th).In other words, fully half of the 10 teams you were most confident would miss the playoffs ended up making it. Needless to say, most of you ended up with a zero here. If you managed to bank any points at all, you were already ahead of the pack.3. Name up to five teams that will finish in the middle 16 of the regular-season standings (i.e., between 9th and 24th).In theory, this question shouldn’t be any harder than the previous two, since you’re being asked to pick teams to fill 16 slots. But for me at least, this one always “feels” tougher than the others, in part because there aren’t any sure things to fall back on.Sure enough, there wasn’t much consensus here, with the Utah Mammoth’s 562 entries finishing just ahead of the St. Louis Blues’ 548 as the most common, well below the first two questions. Utah and St. Louis both counted as right answers, but four of your next six did not — the Montreal Canadiens, Minnesota Wild, Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames.The Canucks are an interesting team to highlight here. They finished dead last in the league, and it wasn’t close. In hindsight, that wasn’t a big surprise, because the Canucks were bad. Surely we all saw this coming.Except we didn’t. You were reasonably confident that they’d be a middle-of-the-pack team, something in hindsight they could have only dreamed of. And only 10 of you — less than 1 percent of the total entries — picked them as a team to miss the playoffs, which they ended up doing by 32 points. And those 10 entries were barely more than the two that picked the Canucks to make the playoffs.The lesson, as always: None of us know anything. Even when, in hindsight, it was completely obvious.