2025-26 regular season · December 7, 2025
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Islanders at Panthers, Dec 7, 2025: who deserved to win?
The Panthers beat the Islanders 4–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Panthers win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 19 points of win probability to the Panthers.
The biggest swing (P1, 7:46 left): Uvis Balinskis scored on a wrist shot from 70 feet, worth 17 points of win probability to the Panthers.
Final
 New York Islanders | 1 |
|---|---|
 Florida Panthers | 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +48 Panthers lucky · −48 Islanders
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. Islanders win 5, Panthers win 5.
- 1 NYI 4 FLA 1
- 2 NYI 3 FLA 0
- 3 NYI 4 FLA 2
- 4 NYI 2 FLA 1
- 5 NYI 3 FLA 2
- 6 NYI 2 FLA 3
- 7 NYI 1 FLA 2
- 8 NYI 1 FLA 3
- 9 NYI 1 FLA 4
- 10 NYI 0 FLA 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 4,000.1 replays ended
Islanders win 48% of them, Panthers 52%. The line is what actually happened: Panthers by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Islanders by 3+ | 15.4% |
| Islanders by 2 | 10.1% |
| Islanders by 1 | 22.2% |
| Panthers by 1 | 23.9% |
| Panthers by 2 | 11.7% |
| Panthers by 3+ | 16.8% |
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.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Islanders | 36 | 1 | 2.16 | −1.16 |
 Panthers | 43 | 3 | 2.28 | +0.72 |
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 16:53 | Interference on the Islanders (Matthew Schaefer): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% FLA |
| P2 8:39 | Hooking on the Panthers (A.J. Greer): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NYI |
When it happened
Panthers’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 7:46 | Uvis Balinskis scored on a wrist shot from 70 feetShooting · 1% chance | +17% FLA | – |
| 2 | P1 4:03 | Casey Cizikas’s snap shot from 10 feet was savedShooting · 21% chance | +4% FLA | – |
| 3 | P2 16:53 | Interference on the Islanders (Matthew Schaefer): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% FLA | – |
| 4 | P2 12:55 | Carter Verhaeghe scored on a wrist shot from 19 feetShooting · 8% chance | +13% FLA | – |
| 5 | P2 10:57 | Mathew Barzal scored on a backhand shot from 18 feetShooting · 7% chance | +14% NYI | – |
| 6 | P2 8:39 | Hooking on the Panthers (A.J. Greer): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% NYI | – |
| 7 | P3 16:18 | Aaron Ekblad’s snap shot from 10 feet was savedShooting · 22% chance | +3% NYI | – |
| 8 | P3 6:03 | Seth Jones scored on a wrist shot from 24 feetShooting · 12% chance | +9% FLA | – |
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
Islanders 18% · Panthers 82%
- Final margin
- Panthers by 3
- Luck in goals
- 1.6 for the Panthers
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Panthers by 1.4
- Replay with same day's form
- Islanders 48% · Panthers 52% 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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