luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · December 31, 2025

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

Sabres at Stars, Dec 31, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Sabres beat the Stars 4–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Sabres win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 29 points of win probability to the Sabres.

The biggest swing (P2, 2:55 left): Bowen Byram scored on a snap shot from 28 feet, worth 22 points of win probability to the Sabres.

Final

Buffalo Sabres 4
Dallas Stars 1

December 31, 2025 · American Airlines Center

Luck index +52 Sabres lucky · −52 Stars

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. Sabres win 5, Stars win 5.

  1. 1 BUF 6 DAL 2
  2. 2 BUF 3 DAL 0
  3. 3 BUF 3 DAL 1
  4. 4 BUF 4 DAL 3
  5. 5 BUF 4 DAL 3
  6. 6 BUF 4 DAL 5
  7. 7 BUF 3 DAL 4
  8. 8 BUF 1 DAL 3
  9. 9 BUF 2 DAL 5
  10. 10 BUF 1 DAL 5

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

Sabres win 48% of them, Stars 52%. The line is what actually happened: Sabres by 3.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Sabres by 3+20.8%
Sabres by 29.0%
Sabres by 118.7%
Stars by 120.0%
Stars by 29.8%
Stars by 3+21.7%

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 +2.4 goals to the Sabres: the final margin was Sabres by 3, without the luck Sabres by 0.6. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Sabres4643.28+0.72
Stars3813.51−2.51

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 19:22 High sticking on the Stars (Radek Faksa): 2 minutes on the power play +3% BUF
P2 18:19 Tripping on the Stars (Justin Hryckowian): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P2 15:16 Tripping on the Sabres (Josh Doan): 2 minutes on the power play +4% DAL
P3 16:01 Hooking on the Sabres (Tage Thompson): 2 minutes on the power play +5% DAL

When it happened

Stars’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 72%. 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 Stars were ahead in it, below while the Sabres were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 19:45 Mavrik Bourque scored on a snap shot from 12 feetShooting · 17% chance +13% DAL –
2 P1 2:41 Tage Thompson’s snap shot from 10 feet was savedShooting · 24% chance +4% DAL –
3 P2 17:19 Colin Blackwell’s snap shot from 6 feet was savedShooting · 30% chance +4% BUF –
4 P2 12:16 Josh Doan scored on a snap shot from 24 feetShooting · 10% chance +18% BUF –
5 P2 2:55 Bowen Byram scored on a snap shot from 28 feetShooting · 8% chance +22% BUF –
6 P3 18:58 Mikko Rantanen missed the net with a snap shot from 9 feetShooting · 24% chance +6% BUF –
7 P3 16:01 Hooking on the Sabres (Tage Thompson): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +5% DAL –
8 P3 10:39 Tage Thompson scored on a snap shot from 9 feetShooting · 25% chance +11% BUF –

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

Sabres 62% · Stars 38%

Final margin
Sabres by 3
Luck in goals
2.4 for the Sabres
Luck-adjusted margin
Sabres by 0.6
Replay with same day's form
Sabres 48% · Stars 52% 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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