luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · December 9, 2025 · SO

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

Golden Knights at Islanders, Dec 9, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Islanders beat the Golden Knights 5–4, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Islanders win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shootout alone was worth 51 points of win probability to the Islanders.

The biggest swing (SO): the Islanders won the shootout, worth 51 points of win probability to the Islanders.

Final (SO)

Vegas Golden Knights 4
New York Islanders 5

December 9, 2025 · UBS Arena

Luck index +52 Islanders lucky · −52 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. Golden Knights win 5, Islanders win 5.

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

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

Golden Knights win 52% of them, Islanders 48%. The line is what actually happened: Islanders by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Golden Knights by 3+21.4%
Golden Knights by 210.1%
Golden Knights by 120.1%
Islanders by 120.7%
Islanders by 210.6%
Islanders by 3+17.2%

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 +1.5 goals to the Islanders: the final margin was Islanders by 1, without the luck Golden Knights by 0.5. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Golden Knights4543.41+0.59
Islanders4142.78+1.22

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 10:23 Tripping on the Islanders (Bo Horvat): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P1 9:29 Interference on the Golden Knights (Mitch Marner): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P1 9:06 Tripping on the Islanders (Ilya Sorokin): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P2 18:36 Interference goalkeeper on the Golden Knights (Brett Howden): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P3 11:16 Hooking on the Golden Knights (Pavel Dorofeyev): 2 minutes on the power play +7% NYI
P3 2:21 Delaying game puck over glass on the Islanders (Adam Pelech): 2 minutes on the power play +6% VGK
P3 0:04 High sticking on the Islanders (Kyle MacLean): 2 minutes on the power play +11% VGK

When it happened

Islanders’ chance of winning

As low as 19% 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 Golden Knights were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 7:58 Noah Hanifin scored on a snap shot from 19 feetShooting · 19% chance +14% VGK –
2 P1 0:27 Bo Horvat scored on a slap shot from 35 feetShooting · 8% chance +14% NYI –
3 P2 16:04 Marc Gatcomb scored on a snap shot from 5 feetShooting · 35% chance +13% NYI –
4 P2 6:30 Simon Holmstrom scored on a wrist shot from 36 feetShooting · 5% chance +21% NYI –
5 P3 18:33 Ivan Barbashev scored on a poke shot from 14 feetShooting · 9% chance +23% VGK –
6 P3 9:45 Bo Horvat scored on a slap shot from 36 feetShooting · 13% chance +28% NYI –
7 P3 0:14 Pavel Dorofeyev scored on a wrist shot from 9 feetShooting · 18% chance +39% VGK –
8 SO The Islanders won the shootoutShootout · shootouts are close to coin flips +51% 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

Golden Knights 61% · Islanders 39%

Final margin
Islanders by 1
Luck in goals
1.5 for the Islanders
Luck-adjusted margin
Golden Knights by 0.5
Replay with same day's form
Golden Knights 52% · Islanders 48% 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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