luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · October 11, 2025

No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.

Sabres at Bruins, Oct 11, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Bruins beat the Sabres 3–1, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 7 of 10.

The biggest swing (P1, 4:12 left): Pavel Zacha scored on a snap shot from 21 feet, worth 16 points of win probability to the Bruins.

Final

Buffalo Sabres 1
Boston Bruins 3

October 11, 2025 · TD Garden

Luck index +33 Bruins lucky · −33 Sabres

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. Sabres win 3, Bruins win 7.

  1. 1 BUF 2 BOS 0
  2. 2 BUF 3 BOS 2
  3. 3 BUF 1 BOS 0
  4. 4 BUF 2 BOS 3
  5. 5 BUF 4 BOS 5
  6. 6 BUF 3 BOS 5
  7. 7 BUF 4 BOS 6
  8. 8 BUF 2 BOS 5
  9. 9 BUF 2 BOS 5
  10. 10 BUF 0 BOS 4

Three other ways to ask

Each answers a different question, so none of them replaces the replay above.

No closing line for this game.

Needs the closing line, which this game has not got.

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 4,000 replays ended

Sabres win 33% of them, Bruins 67%. The line is what actually happened: Bruins by 2.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Sabres by 3+5.8%
Sabres by 26.5%
Sabres by 120.5%
Bruins by 121.5%
Bruins by 213.2%
Bruins by 3+32.4%

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.

Swings add up across a game, so in one that went back and forth they can pass 100%. On the scoreboard the same luck was worth 0.0 goals to the Sabres: the final margin was Bruins by 2, without the luck Bruins by 2. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Sabres3911.96−0.96
Bruins4822.83−0.83

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.

WhenCallWin probability for
P1 9:19 Hooking on the Sabres (Conor Timmins): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BOS
P1 3:38 Tripping on the Sabres (Jiri Kulich): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BOS
P2 19:17 Hooking on the Bruins (Morgan Geekie): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P2 14:22 Tripping on the Bruins (Fraser Minten): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P2 12:21 Hooking on the Sabres (Owen Power): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BOS
P2 2:10 Interference on the Sabres (Tage Thompson): 2 minutes on the power play +2% BOS
P2 1:14 Interference on the Bruins (David Pastrnak): 2 minutes on the power play +2% BUF
P3 9:53 Tripping on the Bruins (Charlie McAvoy): 2 minutes on the power play +5% BUF

When it happened

Bruins’ chance of winning

Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.

Our in-game win probability: the score and the time left, starting from the betting line (or the home edge alone when there is none), with goals at the league’s rates for the score. Overtime is drawn at a fixed width. Shaded above the middle while the Bruins were ahead in it, below while the Sabres were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 9:19 Hooking on the Sabres (Conor Timmins): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% BOS –
2 P1 4:12 Pavel Zacha scored on a snap shot from 21 feetShooting · 12% chance +16% BOS –
3 P2 17:22 Josh Doan’s snap shot from 6 feet was savedShooting · 23% chance +4% BOS –
4 P2 12:21 Hooking on the Sabres (Owen Power): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% BOS –
5 P2 9:39 Mark Kastelic scored on a slap shot from 53 feetShooting · 2% chance +14% BOS –
6 P3 10:14 Jason Zucker scored on a snap shot from 39 feetShooting · 4% chance +12% BUF –
7 P3 9:53 Tripping on the Bruins (Charlie McAvoy): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +5% BUF –
8 P3 0:14 Jason Zucker missed the net with a snap shot from 10 feetShooting · 19% chance +9% BOS –

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

Sabres 12% · Bruins 88%

Final margin
Bruins by 2
Luck in goals
none
Luck-adjusted margin
Bruins by 2.0
Replay with same day's form
Sabres 33% · Bruins 67% unchanged: why
How much of each is luck?

0% treats it as skill, 100% as pure luck. The tick is our fit.

What counts
Flip a play

Force the other outcome, in this game and in every replay: a goal becomes a save, a post goes in, a penalty goes the other way.

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.

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