2025-26 regular season · October 20, 2025
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Hurricanes at Golden Knights, Oct 20, 2025: who deserved to win?
The Golden Knights beat the Hurricanes 4–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Golden Knights win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 16 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.
The biggest swing (P1, 11:18 left): Jack Eichel scored on a wrist shot from 21 feet, worth 16 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.
Final
 Carolina Hurricanes | 1 |
|---|---|
 Vegas Golden Knights | 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +43 Golden Knights lucky · −43 Hurricanes
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. Hurricanes win 4, Golden Knights win 6.
- 1 CAR 3 VGK 0
- 2 CAR 4 VGK 2
- 3 CAR 1 VGK 0
- 4 CAR 1 VGK 0
- 5 CAR 3 VGK 4
- 6 CAR 0 VGK 1
- 7 CAR 1 VGK 2
- 8 CAR 0 VGK 2
- 9 CAR 0 VGK 3
- 10 CAR 1 VGK 4
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
Hurricanes win 43% of them, Golden Knights 57%. The line is what actually happened: Golden Knights by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Hurricanes by 3+ | 11.8% |
| Hurricanes by 2 | 8.7% |
| Hurricanes by 1 | 22.9% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 25.5% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 12.4% |
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 18.6% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Hurricanes | 37 | 1 | 1.94 | −0.94 |
 Golden Knights | 36 | 3 | 2.09 | +0.91 |
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 7:17 | Interference on the Hurricanes (Sean Walker): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P1 0:15 | Hooking on the Golden Knights (Pavel Dorofeyev): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% CAR |
| P2 11:38 | Slashing on the Hurricanes (Nikolaj Ehlers): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% VGK |
| P2 10:14 | Interference on the Golden Knights (Tomas Hertl): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% CAR |
| P2 5:27 | Slashing on the Golden Knights (Shea Theodore): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% CAR |
| P2 4:26 | Tripping on the Hurricanes (Nikolaj Ehlers): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% VGK |
| P3 7:59 | Slashing on the Hurricanes (Alexander Nikishin): 2 minutes on the power play | +2% VGK |
| P3 1:21 | High sticking on the Golden Knights (Colton Sissons): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% CAR |
When it happened
Golden Knights’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 11:18 | Jack Eichel scored on a wrist shot from 21 feetShooting · 2% chance | +16% VGK | – |
| 2 | P1 9:32 | Pavel Dorofeyev scored on a backhand shot from 7 feetShooting · 12% chance | +12% VGK | – |
| 3 | P2 15:42 | Sebastian Aho scored on a wrist shot from 25 feetShooting · 7% chance | +13% CAR | – |
| 4 | P2 10:14 | Interference on the Golden Knights (Tomas Hertl): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% CAR | – |
| 5 | P2 5:27 | Slashing on the Golden Knights (Shea Theodore): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% CAR | – |
| 6 | P2 4:26 | Tripping on the Hurricanes (Nikolaj Ehlers): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% VGK | – |
| 7 | P3 16:24 | Seth Jarvis’s wrist shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 19% chance | +5% VGK | – |
| 8 | P3 8:54 | Ivan Barbashev scored on a wrist shot from 16 feetShooting · 13% chance | +11% VGK | – |
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
Hurricanes 21% · Golden Knights 79%
- Final margin
- Golden Knights by 3
- Luck in goals
- 1.9 for the Golden Knights
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Golden Knights by 1.1
- Replay with same day's form
- Hurricanes 43% · Golden Knights 57% 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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