luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · January 24, 2026

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

Canadiens at Bruins, Jan 24, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Bruins beat the Canadiens 4–3, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 6 of 10.

The biggest swing (P3, 5:53 left): Morgan Geekie scored on a slap shot from 53 feet, worth 35 points of win probability to the Bruins.

Final

Montreal Canadiens 3
Boston Bruins 4

January 24, 2026 · TD Garden

Luck index +39 Bruins lucky · −39 Canadiens

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. Canadiens win 4, Bruins win 6.

  1. 1 MTL 5 BOS 2
  2. 2 MTL 4 BOS 2
  3. 3 MTL 2 BOS 1
  4. 4 MTL 5 BOS 4
  5. 5 MTL 2 BOS 3
  6. 6 MTL 1 BOS 2
  7. 7 MTL 1 BOS 3
  8. 8 MTL 1 BOS 4
  9. 9 MTL 2 BOS 5
  10. 10 MTL 0 BOS 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 4,000.2 replays ended

Canadiens win 39% of them, Bruins 61%. The line is what actually happened: Bruins by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Canadiens by 3+12.5%
Canadiens by 28.2%
Canadiens by 118.1%
Bruins by 121.2%
Bruins by 210.7%
Bruins by 3+29.3%

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 +0.1 goals to the Canadiens: the final margin was Bruins by 1, without the luck Bruins by 1.1. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Canadiens4232.93+0.07
Bruins3943.45+0.55

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 10:32 Tripping on the Canadiens (Zachary Bolduc): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BOS
P2 19:35 Interference on the Canadiens (Noah Dobson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BOS
P2 13:30 Tripping on the Bruins (Pavel Zacha): 2 minutes on the power play +5% MTL
P2 10:58 High sticking on the Canadiens (Kaiden Guhle): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BOS
P2 7:51 Interference on the Bruins (David Pastrnak): 2 minutes on the power play +5% MTL
P3 11:46 Roughing on the Bruins (Andrew Peeke): 2 minutes on the power play +5% MTL
P3 5:57 Holding on the Canadiens (Alexandre Carrier): 2 minutes on the power play +9% BOS

When it happened

Bruins’ chance of winning

As low as 15% 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 Bruins were ahead in it, below while the Canadiens were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 13:24 Cole Caufield scored on a snap shot from 15 feetShooting · 19% chance +13% MTL –
2 P2 18:15 Viktor Arvidsson scored on a snap shot from 2 feetShooting · 63% chance +7% BOS –
3 P2 12:23 Cole Caufield scored on a slap shot from 25 feetShooting · 6% chance +20% MTL –
4 P2 10:14 Morgan Geekie scored on a snap shot from 8 feetShooting · 26% chance +16% BOS –
5 P2 6:31 Cole Caufield scored on a wrist shot from 18 feetShooting · 6% chance +22% MTL –
6 P3 6:05 Fraser Minten scored on a backhand shot from 21 feetShooting · 10% chance +34% BOS –
7 P3 5:57 Holding on the Canadiens (Alexandre Carrier): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +9% BOS –
8 P3 5:53 Morgan Geekie scored on a slap shot from 53 feetShooting · 4% chance +35% BOS –

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

Canadiens 29% · Bruins 71%

Final margin
Bruins by 1
Luck in goals
0.1 for the Canadiens
Luck-adjusted margin
Bruins by 1.1
Replay with same day's form
Canadiens 39% · Bruins 61% 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 16 2025-26 games · Canadiens · Bruins

More from week 16, 2025-26

Every game of week 16, 2025-26