luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · October 18, 2025

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

Stars at Blues, Oct 18, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Blues beat the Stars 3–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Blues win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 17 points of win probability to the Blues.

The biggest swing (P2, 17:33 left): Jordan Kyrou scored on a wrist shot from 20 feet, worth 16 points of win probability to the Blues.

Final

Dallas Stars 1
St. Louis Blues 3

October 18, 2025 · Enterprise Center

Luck index +40 Blues lucky · −40 Stars

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. Stars win 4, Blues win 6.

  1. 1 DAL 5 STL 2
  2. 2 DAL 3 STL 1
  3. 3 DAL 3 STL 2
  4. 4 DAL 3 STL 2
  5. 5 DAL 0 STL 1
  6. 6 DAL 2 STL 3
  7. 7 DAL 1 STL 2
  8. 8 DAL 1 STL 3
  9. 9 DAL 0 STL 3
  10. 10 DAL 0 STL 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

Stars win 40% of them, Blues 60%. The line is what actually happened: Blues by 2.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Stars by 3+9.9%
Stars by 28.5%
Stars by 122.0%
Blues by 123.9%
Blues by 213.0%
Blues by 3+22.7%

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 +1.1 goals to the Blues: the final margin was Blues by 2, without the luck Blues by 0.9. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Stars2711.81−0.81
Blues3222.25−0.25

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 10:39 Roughing on the Blues (Tyler Tucker): 2 minutes on the power play +4% DAL
P1 2:58 Hooking on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power play +4% STL
P2 15:01 Hooking on the Blues (Jimmy Snuggerud): 2 minutes on the power play +4% DAL
P2 10:48 Cross checking on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power play +4% STL

When it happened

Blues’ 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 Blues were ahead in it, below while the Stars were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 10:39 Roughing on the Blues (Tyler Tucker): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% DAL –
2 P1 2:58 Hooking on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% STL –
3 P2 17:33 Jordan Kyrou scored on a wrist shot from 20 feetShooting · 17% chance +16% STL –
4 P2 15:01 Hooking on the Blues (Jimmy Snuggerud): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% DAL –
5 P2 10:48 Cross checking on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% STL –
6 P2 6:08 Jimmy Snuggerud scored on a poke shot from 7 feetShooting · 11% chance +13% STL –
7 P3 15:13 Roope Hintz missed the net with a snap shot from 7 feetShooting · 24% chance +4% STL –
8 P3 2:18 Mikko Rantanen scored on a deflected shot from 7 feetShooting · 5% chance +6% DAL –

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

Stars 30% · Blues 70%

Final margin
Blues by 2
Luck in goals
1.1 for the Blues
Luck-adjusted margin
Blues by 0.9
Replay with same day's form
Stars 40% · Blues 60% 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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