luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · December 23, 2025

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

Sharks at Golden Knights, Dec 23, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Golden Knights beat the Sharks 7–2, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 7 of 10.

The biggest swing (P1, 18:14 left): Brett Howden scored on a snap shot from 12 feet, worth 13 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.

Final

San Jose Sharks 2
Vegas Golden Knights 7

December 23, 2025 · T-Mobile Arena

Luck index +25 Golden Knights lucky · −25 Sharks

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. Sharks win 3, Golden Knights win 7.

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

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 4,000.2 replays ended

Sharks win 25% of them, Golden Knights 75%. The line is what actually happened: Golden Knights by 5.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Sharks by 3+5.6%
Sharks by 24.6%
Sharks by 114.9%
Golden Knights by 116.3%
Golden Knights by 211.9%
Golden Knights by 3+46.7%

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 +2.5 goals to the Golden Knights: the final margin was Golden Knights by 5, without the luck Golden Knights by 2.5. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Sharks3521.98+0.02
Golden Knights4273.71+3.29

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 12:02 Slashing on the Sharks (Shakir Mukhamadullin): 2 minutes on the power play +3% VGK
P1 7:47 Interference on the Golden Knights (Zach Whitecloud): 2 minutes on the power play +2% SJS
P1 7:37 High sticking on the Sharks (William Eklund): 2 minutes on the power play +2% VGK
P2 11:58 Tripping on the Sharks (William Eklund): 2 minutes on the power play 0% VGK
P3 5:16 Roughing on the Sharks (Mario Ferraro): 2 minutes on the power play 0% VGK
P3 0:00 Slashing on the Golden Knights (Ben Hutton): 2 minutes on the power play 0% SJS

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 Sharks were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 18:14 Brett Howden scored on a snap shot from 12 feetShooting · 16% chance +13% VGK –
2 P1 14:40 Colton Sissons’s wrist shot from 6 feet was savedShooting · 16% chance +2% SJS –
3 P1 12:39 Pavel Dorofeyev’s wrist shot from 10 feet was savedShooting · 16% chance +2% SJS –
4 P1 12:02 Slashing on the Sharks (Shakir Mukhamadullin): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +3% VGK –
5 P1 10:53 Mitch Marner scored on a wrist shot from 30 feetShooting · 6% chance +12% VGK –
6 P1 8:23 Colton Sissons scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 14% chance +8% VGK –
7 P1 7:47 Interference on the Golden Knights (Zach Whitecloud): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +2% SJS –
8 P1 5:03 Tomas Hertl scored on a snap shot from 16 feetShooting · 17% chance +4% VGK –

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

Sharks 5% · Golden Knights 95%

Final margin
Golden Knights by 5
Luck in goals
2.5 for the Golden Knights
Luck-adjusted margin
Golden Knights by 2.5
Replay with same day's form
Sharks 25% · Golden Knights 75% 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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