luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · November 18, 2025

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

Rangers at Golden Knights, Nov 18, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Golden Knights beat the Rangers 3–2, 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 17 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.

The biggest swing (P1, 8:20 left): Braeden Bowman scored on a wrist shot from 14 feet, worth 15 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.

Final

New York Rangers 2
Vegas Golden Knights 3

November 18, 2025 · T-Mobile Arena

Luck index +41 Golden Knights lucky · −41 Rangers

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. Rangers win 4, Golden Knights win 6.

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

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

Rangers win 41% of them, Golden Knights 59%. The line is what actually happened: Golden Knights by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Rangers by 3+10.0%
Rangers by 29.0%
Rangers by 122.5%
Golden Knights by 124.1%
Golden Knights by 211.6%
Golden Knights by 3+22.8%

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 +0.3 goals to the Golden Knights: the final margin was Golden Knights by 1, without the luck Golden Knights by 0.7. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Rangers3522.21−0.21
Golden Knights3932.26+0.74

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 8:46 Tripping on the Rangers (Artemi Panarin): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P2 7:24 Tripping on the Golden Knights (Kaedan Korczak): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYR
P3 14:25 Interference on the Rangers (Carson Soucy): 2 minutes on the power play +5% VGK
P3 7:22 A Golden Knights goal came off the board on review (off side) +7% NYR

When it happened

Golden Knights’ 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 Golden Knights were ahead in it, below while the Rangers were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 8:20 Braeden Bowman scored on a wrist shot from 14 feetShooting · 11% chance +15% VGK –
2 P2 16:37 Ben Hutton scored on a wrist shot from 23 feetShooting · 6% chance +13% VGK –
3 P2 11:04 Jonny Brodzinski scored on a snap shot from 6 feetShooting · 29% chance +10% NYR –
4 P2 9:10 Jonny Brodzinski hit the left post with a wrist shot from 3 feetShooting · 22% chance +5% VGK –
5 P3 14:25 Interference on the Rangers (Carson Soucy): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +5% VGK –
6 P3 12:42 Shea Theodore scored on a snap shot from 46 feetShooting · 3% chance +13% VGK –
7 P3 7:22 A Golden Knights goal came off the board on review (off side)Overturned goals +7% NYR –
8 P3 2:43 Vincent Trocheck scored on a tip from 8 feetShooting · 11% chance +6% NYR –

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

Rangers 35% · Golden Knights 65%

Final margin
Golden Knights by 1
Luck in goals
0.3 for the Golden Knights
Luck-adjusted margin
Golden Knights by 0.7
Replay with same day's form
Rangers 41% · Golden Knights 59% 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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