2025-26 regular season · October 16, 2025
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Avalanche at Blue Jackets, Oct 16, 2025: who deserved to win?
The Avalanche beat the Blue Jackets 4–1, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 7 of 10.
The game turned on a luck play (P2, 9:26 left): Cale Makar scored on a wrist shot from 43 feet, worth 20 points of win probability to the Avalanche. The biggest single swing (P2, 8:14 left): Brock Nelson scored on a tip from 25 feet.
Final
 Colorado Avalanche | 4 |
|---|---|
 Columbus Blue Jackets | 1 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +32 Avalanche lucky · −32 Blue Jackets
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. Avalanche win 7, Blue Jackets win 3.
- 1 COL 7 CBJ 1
- 2 COL 4 CBJ 0
- 3 COL 5 CBJ 2
- 4 COL 5 CBJ 2
- 5 COL 3 CBJ 1
- 6 COL 3 CBJ 2
- 7 COL 5 CBJ 4
- 8 COL 4 CBJ 5
- 9 COL 1 CBJ 2
- 10 COL 0 CBJ 3
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 4,000 replays ended
Avalanche win 68% of them, Blue Jackets 32%. The line is what actually happened: Avalanche by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Avalanche by 3+ | 37.2% |
| Avalanche by 2 | 11.6% |
| Avalanche by 1 | 19.4% |
| Blue Jackets by 1 | 18.3% |
| Blue Jackets by 2 | 6.2% |
| Blue Jackets by 3+ | 7.3% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Avalanche | 53 | 3 | 3.40 | −0.40 |
 Blue Jackets | 40 | 1 | 2.08 | −1.08 |
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 2:28 | Hooking on the Avalanche (Brent Burns): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% CBJ |
| P3 16:40 | Hooking on the Avalanche (Martin Necas): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% CBJ |
| P3 12:13 | Holding on the Blue Jackets (Dmitri Voronkov): 2 minutes on the power play | +2% COL |
When it happened
Blue Jackets’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 74%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 3:14 | Cale Makar’s wrist shot from 10 feet was savedShooting · 17% chance | +3% CBJ | – |
| 2 | P1 2:28 | Hooking on the Avalanche (Brent Burns): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% CBJ | – |
| 3 | P1 0:12 | Nathan MacKinnon’s wrist shot from 9 feet was savedShooting · 14% chance | +3% CBJ | – |
| 4 | P2 18:24 | Ivan Provorov scored on a wrist shot from 30 feetShooting · 5% chance | +18% CBJ | – |
| 5 | P2 9:32 | Artturi Lehkonen missed the net with a wrist shot from 15 feetShooting · 13% chance | +3% CBJ | – |
| 6 | P2 9:26 | The game turned hereCale Makar scored on a wrist shot from 43 feetShooting · 4% chance | +20% COL | – |
| 7 | P2 8:14 | Brock Nelson scored on a tip from 25 feetShooting · 7% chance | +21% COL | – |
| 8 | P2 0:04 | Valeri Nichushkin scored on a tip from 10 feetShooting · 10% chance | +15% COL | – |
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
Avalanche 95% · Blue Jackets 5%
- Final margin
- Avalanche by 3
- Luck in goals
- 0.1 for the Blue Jackets
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Avalanche by 3.1
- Replay with same day's form
- Avalanche 68% · Blue Jackets 32% 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.
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