2025-26 regular season · October 9, 2025
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Senators at Lightning, Oct 9, 2025: who deserved to win?
The Senators beat the Lightning 5–4, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Senators win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 24 points of win probability to the Senators.
The game turned on a luck play (P2, 4:51 left): Shane Pinto scored on a wrist shot from 14 feet, worth 20 points of win probability to the Senators. The biggest single swing (P3, 1:47 left): Shane Pinto scored on a snap shot from 9 feet.
Final
 Ottawa Senators | 5 |
|---|---|
 Tampa Bay Lightning | 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +43 Senators lucky · −43 Lightning
Each team’s own shots from this game, resampled into new games 4,000 times, each a goal at its chance, with the power plays the penalties gave and the pulled goalie at the end: with the way both teams actually played, how often does this performance win? How the replay works
Ten replays. Senators win 6, Lightning win 4.
- 1 OTT 5 TBL 0
- 2 OTT 4 TBL 1
- 3 OTT 4 TBL 1
- 4 OTT 3 TBL 1
- 5 OTT 8 TBL 7
- 6 OTT 3 TBL 2
- 7 OTT 5 TBL 6
- 8 OTT 2 TBL 3
- 9 OTT 3 TBL 5
- 10 OTT 2 TBL 5
Three other ways to ask
Each answers a different question, so none of them replaces the replay above.
Before puck drop
No closing line for this game.
Same teams, fresh game
Needs the closing line, which this game has not got.
Only coin-flips re-rolled
Every shot redrawn at its chance, overtime and the shootout replayed as near coin flips; the shots themselves and every call fixed. The narrowest view of luck.
How 3,999.9 replays ended
Senators win 57% of them, Lightning 43%. The line is what actually happened: Senators by 1.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Senators by 3+ | 25.0% |
| Senators by 2 | 10.9% |
| Senators by 1 | 20.7% |
| Lightning by 1 | 21.4% |
| Lightning by 2 | 8.4% |
| Lightning by 3+ | 13.6% |
Where the luck was
What the luck was worth
Every lucky and unlucky play, weighted by the moment it happened: its swing in win probability, added up by kind. A post hit in a blowout counts for nothing; the same post with a minute left in a tie game can be most of a win.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Senators | 45 | 4 | 2.81 | +1.19 |
 Lightning | 38 | 4 | 2.23 | +1.77 |
Regulation with both goalies in. Expected goals: our model of each shot’s chance from where and how it was taken (distance, angle, shot type, rebound, rush, strength), adjusted for the shooter’s and the goalie’s records. A team above expected finished better or met a weaker night in goal; 75% of the gap counts as luck (why that share).
Calls
Every penalty that put a team on the power play, and every goal taken off the board on review, with what it did to the helped team’s chance of winning at that moment. Calls don’t count toward luck by default: who draws penalties repeats from game to game like a skill (how calls are valued). Switch them on below.
| When | Call | Win probability for |
|---|---|---|
| P1 15:15 | Holding on the Senators (Dylan Cozens): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% TBL |
| P1 10:50 | Tripping on the Lightning (Brandon Hagel): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% OTT |
| P1 7:02 | Holding on the Senators (David Perron): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% TBL |
| P1 4:41 | Holding on the Lightning (Pontus Holmberg): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% OTT |
| P2 12:07 | Roughing on the Lightning (Mitchell Chaffee): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% OTT |
| P2 1:29 | Holding on the Lightning (Mitchell Chaffee): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% OTT |
| P3 17:37 | Interference on the Senators (Artem Zub): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% TBL |
When it happened
Lightning’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 86%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 14:25 | Oliver Bjorkstrand scored on a snap shot from 7 feetShooting · 25% chance | +12% TBL | – |
| 2 | P1 13:00 | Brayden Point scored on a wrist shot from 27 feetShooting · 7% chance | +12% TBL | – |
| 3 | P1 9:42 | Dylan Cozens scored on a slap shot from 42 feetShooting · 5% chance | +13% OTT | – |
| 4 | P1 5:14 | Nikita Kucherov scored on a wrist shot from 28 feetShooting · 10% chance | +12% TBL | – |
| 5 | P2 19:18 | Artem Zub scored on a wrist shot from 65 feetShooting · 1% chance | +14% OTT | – |
| 6 | P2 4:51 | The game turned hereShane Pinto scored on a wrist shot from 14 feetShooting · 11% chance | +20% OTT | – |
| 7 | P3 1:48 | Jake Sanderson’s wrist shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 16% chance | +7% TBL | – |
| 8 | P3 1:47 | Shane Pinto scored on a snap shot from 9 feetShooting · 19% chance | +36% OTT | – |
Adjust the assumptions
Think finishing is more skill than we do, or that the calls were luck? Change it and the coin-flip replay reruns in your browser.
Only coin-flips re-rolled
Senators 67% · Lightning 33%
- Final margin
- Senators by 1
- Luck in goals
- 0.1 for the Senators
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Senators by 0.9
- Replay with same day's form
- Senators 57% · Lightning 43% unchanged: why
About these numbers
Play-by-play from the NHL via fastRhockey; expected goals, in-game win probability and the replays are our own models, fitted on every game since 2018-19 (methodology and validation). Blocked shots aren’t replayed (their location is the block’s, not the shot’s). No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
More from week 1, 2025-26
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