A furry, crab-eating macaque has become the hockey world's latest hero. Having picked the winners through three rounds of the NHL playoffs, Maggie the Monkey is enjoying new-found fame as the sport's wisest prognosticating primate.

TSN's James Duthie told Canada AM that the unpredictability of playoff hockey was the real impetus behind adding the furry pundit to its roster of experts

"We thought it was kind of a farce, so one of our producers says 'why don't we do something random like a monkey spinning a wheel?' "

And that's what Maggie the monkey does. So TSN drafted the trained monkey -- who normally lives in the zoo at Bowmanville, Ontario -- into the sports networks' broadcast team.

While TSN convened a typical panel of experts to weigh in with their carefully considered playoff predictions -- who, of course unanimously favoured Detroit -- Maggie did her best spinning a wheel of chance.

Duthie says her past record had been somewhat mediocre, "but what she did in the first round was pick the Anaheim Mighty Ducks to upset the Wings. Then in the second round... she picked them over the Stars, then again over the Wild."

All that monkeying around has added up to a so-far flawless record, leaving the experts scratching their heads and turning Maggie into an international star.

"The monkey knows things that we don't know and see things that we don't see," Duthie said in deference to Maggie's apparently uncanny ability.

As news of her talent has spread, Maggie has become something of a celebrity monkey. And nowhere is her unique brand of wisdom more popular than in Anaheim, home to the Cinderella story of the Stanley Cup run -- the Mighty Ducks.

"They love her in Anaheim and they love her around the world," Duthie said. "She's very big."

So big, in fact, that Maggie has graced the front page of the L.A. Times. She's also made the news everywhere from Australia to Seattle.

But here in Canada, where patriotic hockey fans' hopes are resting on the shoulders of the Ottawa Senators, Maggie has done little to ingratiate herself.

She's picked the Devils to best the Senators.

"So the monkey is actually getting hate mail from Ottawa fans who do not like her because they think it's bad karma," Duthie said.

He added: "The monkey is a little nervous about game 7 on Friday night."