luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · January 2, 2026

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

Golden Knights at Blues, Jan 2, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Blues beat the Golden Knights 4–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Blues win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 41 points of win probability to the Blues.

The biggest swing (P3, 1:33 left): Brayden Schenn scored on a deflected shot from 6 feet, worth 38 points of win probability to the Blues.

Final

Vegas Golden Knights 3
St. Louis Blues 4

January 2, 2026 · Enterprise Center

Luck index +50 Blues lucky · −50 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, Blues win 5.

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

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 3,999.8 replays ended

Golden Knights win 50% of them, Blues 50%. The line is what actually happened: Blues by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Golden Knights by 3+15.6%
Golden Knights by 210.2%
Golden Knights by 124.4%
Blues by 124.7%
Blues by 29.9%
Blues by 3+15.2%

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 0.0 goals to the Blues: the final margin was Blues by 1, without the luck Blues by 1. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Golden Knights3632.08+0.92
Blues3242.05+1.95

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 18:25 Holding on the Blues (Jordan Kyrou): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P1 12:51 Delaying game puck over glass on the Blues (Justin Faulk): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P1 4:49 Tripping on the Golden Knights (Ben Hutton): 2 minutes on the power play +4% STL
P1 0:22 Tripping on the Golden Knights (Mitch Marner): 2 minutes on the power play +4% STL

When it happened

Blues’ chance of winning

As low as 36% 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 Blues were ahead in it, below while the Golden Knights were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 9:48 Keegan Kolesar scored on a wrist shot from 23 feetShooting · 8% chance +16% VGK –
2 P1 9:21 Alexey Toropchenko scored on a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 12% chance +15% STL –
3 P1 0:22 Tripping on the Golden Knights (Mitch Marner): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% STL –
4 P2 14:21 Justin Faulk scored on a wrist shot from 24 feetShooting · 6% chance +19% STL –
5 P2 13:23 Oskar Sundqvist scored on a snap shot from 5 feetShooting · 15% chance +12% STL –
6 P2 10:50 Mark Stone scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 19% chance +12% VGK –
7 P3 11:39 Pavel Dorofeyev scored on a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 12% chance +27% VGK –
8 P3 1:33 Brayden Schenn scored on a deflected shot from 6 feetShooting · 12% chance +38% STL –

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 24% · Blues 76%

Final margin
Blues by 1
Luck in goals
none
Luck-adjusted margin
Blues by 1.0
Replay with same day's form
Golden Knights 50% · Blues 50% 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.

All week 13 2025-26 games · Golden Knights · Blues

More from week 13, 2025-26

Every game of week 13, 2025-26