2025-26 regular season · January 7, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Stars at Capitals, Jan 7, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Stars beat the Capitals 4–1, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 8 of 10.
The biggest swing (P1, 16:54 left): Radek Faksa scored on a wrist shot from 6 feet, worth 13 points of win probability to the Stars.
Final
 Dallas Stars | 4 |
|---|---|
 Washington Capitals | 1 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +25 Stars lucky · −25 Capitals
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. Stars win 8, Capitals win 2.
- 1 DAL 6 WSH 0
- 2 DAL 5 WSH 0
- 3 DAL 5 WSH 1
- 4 DAL 6 WSH 3
- 5 DAL 6 WSH 3
- 6 DAL 4 WSH 2
- 7 DAL 1 WSH 0
- 8 DAL 3 WSH 2
- 9 DAL 2 WSH 3
- 10 DAL 3 WSH 5
Three other ways to ask
Each answers a different question, so none of them replaces the replay above.
Before puck drop
No closing line for this game.
Same teams, fresh game
Needs the closing line, which this game has not got.
Only coin-flips re-rolled
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
Stars win 75% of them, Capitals 25%. The line is what actually happened: Stars by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Stars by 3+ | 47.8% |
| Stars by 2 | 12.5% |
| Stars by 1 | 14.7% |
| Capitals by 1 | 16.1% |
| Capitals by 2 | 4.5% |
| Capitals by 3+ | 4.4% |
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.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Stars | 44 | 3 | 4.18 | −1.18 |
 Capitals | 36 | 1 | 2.11 | −1.11 |
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.
| When | Call | Win probability for |
|---|---|---|
| P1 17:16 | Holding on the Stars (Ilya Lyubushkin): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% WSH |
| P1 16:44 | Abuse of officials on the Capitals (Connor McMichael): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% DAL |
| P2 4:05 | Slashing on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% WSH |
| P3 15:03 | Hooking on the Capitals (Nic Dowd): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% DAL |
When it happened
Capitals’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 54%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 17:16 | Holding on the Stars (Ilya Lyubushkin): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% WSH | – |
| 2 | P1 16:54 | Radek Faksa scored on a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 17% chance | +13% DAL | – |
| 3 | P1 16:44 | Abuse of officials on the Capitals (Connor McMichael): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% DAL | – |
| 4 | P1 16:30 | Dylan Strome missed the net with a tip from 5 feetShooting · 16% chance | +3% DAL | – |
| 5 | P2 17:23 | Sam Steel scored on a tip from 1 feetShooting · 83% chance | +3% DAL | – |
| 6 | P2 4:05 | Slashing on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% WSH | – |
| 7 | P2 0:23 | Justin Sourdif’s snap shot from 21 feet was savedShooting · 15% chance | +2% DAL | – |
| 8 | P3 15:03 | Hooking on the Capitals (Nic Dowd): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% DAL | – |
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
Stars 97% · Capitals 3%
- Final margin
- Stars by 3
- Luck in goals
- 0.7 for the Capitals
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Stars by 3.7
- Replay with same day's form
- Stars 75% · Capitals 25% unchanged: why
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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