luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · November 2, 2025

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

Blue Jackets at Islanders, Nov 2, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Islanders beat the Blue Jackets 3–2, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 6 of 10.

The biggest swing (P3, 1:07 left): Matthew Schaefer scored on a snap shot from 70 feet, worth 44 points of win probability to the Islanders.

Final

Columbus Blue Jackets 2
New York Islanders 3

November 2, 2025 · UBS Arena

Luck index +37 Islanders lucky · −37 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. Blue Jackets win 4, Islanders win 6.

  1. 1 CBJ 9 NYI 6
  2. 2 CBJ 4 NYI 2
  3. 3 CBJ 4 NYI 3
  4. 4 CBJ 3 NYI 2
  5. 5 CBJ 2 NYI 3
  6. 6 CBJ 4 NYI 5
  7. 7 CBJ 3 NYI 5
  8. 8 CBJ 2 NYI 5
  9. 9 CBJ 2 NYI 6
  10. 10 CBJ 3 NYI 9

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 4,000.2 replays ended

Blue Jackets win 37% of them, Islanders 63%. The line is what actually happened: Islanders by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Blue Jackets by 3+12.2%
Blue Jackets by 28.2%
Blue Jackets by 116.4%
Islanders by 117.9%
Islanders by 210.7%
Islanders by 3+34.4%

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 +0.5 goals to the Blue Jackets: the final margin was Islanders by 1, without the luck Islanders by 1.5. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Blue Jackets3323.06−1.06
Islanders5234.04−1.04

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 14:17 Cross checking on the Blue Jackets (Damon Severson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P2 16:54 Hooking on the Islanders (Mathew Barzal): 2 minutes on the power play +4% CBJ
P2 8:28 Slashing on the Islanders (Tony DeAngelo): 2 minutes on the power play +4% CBJ
P2 3:40 Hooking on the Islanders (Anthony Duclair): 2 minutes on the power play +5% CBJ
P3 4:22 Tripping on the Islanders (Alexander Romanov): 2 minutes on the power play +6% CBJ
P3 3:43 Interference on the Blue Jackets (Dmitri Voronkov): 2 minutes on the power play +6% NYI

When it happened

Islanders’ chance of winning

As low as 10% and as high as 100%. 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 Islanders were ahead in it, below while the Blue Jackets were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 14:07 Matthew Schaefer scored on a snap shot from 40 feetShooting · 8% chance +15% NYI –
2 P2 8:16 Kent Johnson’s snap shot from 2 feet was savedShooting · 60% chance +13% NYI –
3 P2 4:39 Miles Wood scored on a tip from 7 feetShooting · 8% chance +21% CBJ –
4 P3 8:12 Dmitri Voronkov missed the net with a snap shot from 9 feetShooting · 22% chance +7% NYI –
5 P3 7:50 Denton Mateychuk scored on a backhand shot from 11 feetShooting · 10% chance +32% CBJ –
6 P3 1:07 Matthew Schaefer scored on a snap shot from 70 feetShooting · 1% chance +44% NYI –
7 P3 0:42 Jean-Gabriel Pageau missed the net with a snap shot from 17 feetShooting · 19% chance +8% CBJ –
8 P3 0:38 Simon Holmstrom scored on a backhand shot from 4 feetShooting · 28% chance +33% NYI –

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

Blue Jackets 21% · Islanders 79%

Final margin
Islanders by 1
Luck in goals
0.5 for the Blue Jackets
Luck-adjusted margin
Islanders by 1.5
Replay with same day's form
Blue Jackets 37% · Islanders 63% 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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