luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · November 6, 2025

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

Lightning at Golden Knights, Nov 6, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Lightning beat the Golden Knights 6–3, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 6 of 10.

The game turned on a luck play (P3, 17:13 left): Nikita Kucherov scored on a wrist shot from 13 feet, worth 24 points of win probability to the Lightning. The biggest single swing (P3, 16:23 left): Mitch Marner scored on a wrist shot from 57 feet.

Final

Tampa Bay Lightning 6
Vegas Golden Knights 3

November 6, 2025 · T-Mobile Arena

Luck index +40 Lightning lucky · −40 Golden Knights

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. Lightning win 6, Golden Knights win 4.

  1. 1 TBL 9 VGK 3
  2. 2 TBL 4 VGK 0
  3. 3 TBL 6 VGK 3
  4. 4 TBL 6 VGK 3
  5. 5 TBL 4 VGK 3
  6. 6 TBL 7 VGK 6
  7. 7 TBL 1 VGK 2
  8. 8 TBL 2 VGK 3
  9. 9 TBL 3 VGK 5
  10. 10 TBL 4 VGK 7

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 4,000.1 replays ended

Lightning win 60% of them, Golden Knights 40%. The line is what actually happened: Lightning by 3.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Lightning by 3+32.4%
Lightning by 210.0%
Lightning by 117.6%
Golden Knights by 118.3%
Golden Knights by 27.6%
Golden Knights by 3+14.0%

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 +0.2 goals to the Lightning: the final margin was Lightning by 3, without the luck Lightning by 2.8. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Lightning4854.30+0.70
Golden Knights4233.61−0.61

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
P2 14:23 Tripping on the Golden Knights (Ivan Barbashev): 2 minutes on the power play +5% TBL
P2 8:23 High sticking on the Golden Knights (Kaedan Korczak): 2 minutes on the power play +5% TBL
P3 19:12 Too many men on the ice on the Golden Knights (VGK): 2 minutes on the power play +6% TBL
P3 15:04 High sticking double minor on the Lightning (Andrei Vasilevskiy): 4 minutes on the power play +10% VGK
P3 7:22 Tripping on the Golden Knights (Jeremy Lauzon): 2 minutes on the power play +6% TBL
P3 4:45 Tripping on the Lightning (Gage Goncalves): 2 minutes on the power play +1% VGK

When it happened

Golden Knights’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 86%. 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 Golden Knights were ahead in it, below while the Lightning were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 12:35 Ivan Barbashev scored on a backhand shot from 14 feetShooting · 6% chance +15% VGK –
2 P1 4:07 Ivan Barbashev scored on a snap shot from 20 feetShooting · 22% chance +11% VGK –
3 P2 19:24 Gage Goncalves scored on a wrist shot from 16 feetShooting · 14% chance +12% TBL –
4 P2 16:32 Dominic James scored on a wrist shot from 10 feetShooting · 15% chance +16% TBL –
5 P3 17:13 The game turned hereNikita Kucherov scored on a wrist shot from 13 feetShooting · 12% chance +24% TBL –
6 P3 16:23 Mitch Marner scored on a wrist shot from 57 feetShooting · 1% chance +27% VGK –
7 P3 15:48 Brandon Hagel scored on a wrist shot from 14 feetShooting · 13% chance +24% TBL –
8 P3 5:47 Nikita Kucherov scored on a slap shot from 39 feetShooting · 7% chance +11% TBL –

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

Lightning 90% · Golden Knights 10%

Final margin
Lightning by 3
Luck in goals
0.2 for the Lightning
Luck-adjusted margin
Lightning by 2.8
Replay with same day's form
Lightning 60% · Golden Knights 40% 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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