2025-26 regular season · December 6, 2025
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Devils at Bruins, Dec 6, 2025: who deserved to win?
The Bruins beat the Devils 4–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Bruins win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 23 points of win probability to the Bruins.
The biggest swing (P2, 18:48 left): Morgan Geekie scored on a snap shot from 14 feet, worth 16 points of win probability to the Bruins.
Final
 New Jersey Devils | 1 |
|---|---|
 Boston Bruins | 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +44 Bruins lucky · −44 Devils
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. Devils win 4, Bruins win 6.
- 1 NJD 4 BOS 1
- 2 NJD 5 BOS 3
- 3 NJD 2 BOS 1
- 4 NJD 1 BOS 0
- 5 NJD 1 BOS 2
- 6 NJD 1 BOS 2
- 7 NJD 0 BOS 2
- 8 NJD 2 BOS 4
- 9 NJD 2 BOS 5
- 10 NJD 1 BOS 5
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 4,000.2 replays ended
Devils win 44% of them, Bruins 56%. The line is what actually happened: Bruins by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Devils by 3+ | 13.2% |
| Devils by 2 | 8.6% |
| Devils by 1 | 22.3% |
| Bruins by 1 | 23.2% |
| Bruins by 2 | 10.6% |
| Bruins by 3+ | 22.1% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Devils | 48 | 1 | 2.27 | −1.27 |
 Bruins | 34 | 3 | 2.51 | +0.49 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| P2 6:13 | Cross checking on the Bruins (Nikita Zadorov): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NJD |
| P3 10:52 | Interference on the Devils (Dennis Cholowski): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% BOS |
When it happened
Bruins’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 4:54 | Connor Brown’s wrist shot from 8 feet was savedShooting · 7% chanceConnor Brown missed the net with a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 13% chance | +4% BOS | – |
| 2 | P1 2:18 | Fraser Minten scored on a snap shot from 18 feetShooting · 16% chance | +15% BOS | – |
| 3 | P1 1:21 | Timo Meier scored on a snap shot from 10 feetShooting · 19% chance | +15% NJD | – |
| 4 | P2 18:48 | Morgan Geekie scored on a snap shot from 14 feetShooting · 17% chance | +16% BOS | – |
| 5 | P2 6:13 | Cross checking on the Bruins (Nikita Zadorov): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% NJD | – |
| 6 | P3 10:52 | Interference on the Devils (Dennis Cholowski): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +5% BOS | – |
| 7 | P3 5:00 | Connor Brown’s wrist shot from 13 feet was savedShooting · 10% chance | +4% BOS | – |
| 8 | P3 3:35 | Casey Mittelstadt scored on a snap shot from 9 feetShooting · 14% chance | +7% BOS | – |
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
Devils 17% · Bruins 83%
- Final margin
- Bruins by 3
- Luck in goals
- 1.5 for the Bruins
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Bruins by 1.5
- Replay with same day's form
- Devils 44% · Bruins 56% 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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