luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · December 20, 2025

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

Blue Jackets at Ducks, Dec 20, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Ducks beat the Blue Jackets 4–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Ducks win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 23 points of win probability to the Ducks.

The biggest swing (P3, 3:29 left): Pavel Mintyukov scored on a wrist shot from 16 feet, worth 36 points of win probability to the Ducks.

Final

Columbus Blue Jackets 3
Anaheim Ducks 4

December 20, 2025 · Honda Center

Luck index +41 Ducks lucky · −41 Blue Jackets

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. Blue Jackets win 4, Ducks win 6.

  1. 1 CBJ 7 ANA 4
  2. 2 CBJ 4 ANA 2
  3. 3 CBJ 3 ANA 2
  4. 4 CBJ 3 ANA 2
  5. 5 CBJ 2 ANA 3
  6. 6 CBJ 1 ANA 2
  7. 7 CBJ 1 ANA 3
  8. 8 CBJ 2 ANA 5
  9. 9 CBJ 0 ANA 3
  10. 10 CBJ 3 ANA 8

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

Blue Jackets win 41% of them, Ducks 59%. The line is what actually happened: Ducks by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Blue Jackets by 3+14.2%
Blue Jackets by 28.0%
Blue Jackets by 118.7%
Ducks by 119.3%
Ducks by 210.6%
Ducks by 3+29.2%

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 +0.5 goals to the Ducks: the final margin was Ducks by 1, without the luck Ducks by 0.5. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Blue Jackets4033.22−0.22
Ducks4943.57+0.43

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 15:29 Holding the stick on the Ducks (Beckett Sennecke): 2 minutes on the power play +3% CBJ
P1 6:28 Delaying game puck over glass on the Blue Jackets (Kent Johnson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% ANA
P2 14:45 Interference goalkeeper on the Ducks (Beckett Sennecke): 2 minutes on the power play +5% CBJ
P2 3:30 Tripping on the Blue Jackets (Mason Marchment): 2 minutes on the power play +4% ANA
P3 2:11 Too many men on the ice on the Blue Jackets (CBJ): 2 minutes on the power play +6% ANA

When it happened

Ducks’ 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 Ducks were ahead in it, below while the Blue Jackets were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 17:46 Mikael Granlund scored on a snap shot from 24 feetShooting · 15% chance +13% ANA –
2 P1 17:00 Jacob Trouba scored on a slap shot from 53 feetShooting · 2% chance +13% ANA –
3 P1 14:06 Dmitri Voronkov scored on a tip from 3 feetShooting · 33% chance +9% CBJ –
4 P2 16:21 Mason Marchment scored on a tip from 7 feetShooting · 8% chance +18% CBJ –
5 P2 6:24 Mason McTavish scored on a snap shot from 25 feetShooting · 13% chance +19% ANA –
6 P3 7:16 Zach Werenski scored on a snap shot from 37 feetShooting · 4% chance +33% CBJ –
7 P3 3:29 Pavel Mintyukov scored on a wrist shot from 16 feetShooting · 11% chance +36% ANA –
8 P3 2:11 Too many men on the ice on the Blue Jackets (CBJ): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% ANA –

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

Blue Jackets 44% · Ducks 56%

Final margin
Ducks by 1
Luck in goals
0.5 for the Ducks
Luck-adjusted margin
Ducks by 0.5
Replay with same day's form
Blue Jackets 41% · Ducks 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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