2025-26 regular season · February 5, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Kings at Golden Knights, Feb 5, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Golden Knights beat the Kings 4–1, but the replays lean toward the Kings: they take 6 of 10 with the same day's form. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 23 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.
The biggest swing (P1, 11:38 left): Jack Eichel scored on a wrist shot from 21 feet, worth 15 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.
Final
| 1 | |
| 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +64 Golden Knights very lucky · −64 Kings
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. Kings win 6, Golden Knights win 4.
- 1 LAK 6 VGK 0
- 2 LAK 6 VGK 2
- 3 LAK 7 VGK 4
- 4 LAK 3 VGK 1
- 5 LAK 3 VGK 2
- 6 LAK 4 VGK 3
- 7 LAK 1 VGK 2
- 8 LAK 1 VGK 2
- 9 LAK 2 VGK 5
- 10 LAK 0 VGK 4
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 4,000.2 replays ended
Kings win 64% of them, Golden Knights 36%. The line is what actually happened: Golden Knights by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Kings by 3+ | 34.1% |
| Kings by 2 | 11.9% |
| Kings by 1 | 17.9% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 18.2% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 6.6% |
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 11.3% |
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.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 52 | 1 | 3.90 | −2.90 | |
| 34 | 4 | 2.50 | +1.50 |
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 11:15 | Tripping on the Golden Knights (Keegan Kolesar): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% LAK |
| P1 6:45 | Hooking on the Kings (Adrian Kempe): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P1 3:25 | High sticking on the Golden Knights (Shea Theodore): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% LAK |
| P2 12:01 | Hooking on the Golden Knights (Ivan Barbashev): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% LAK |
| P2 1:57 | Abuse of officials on the Golden Knights (Mitch Marner): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% LAK |
| P3 13:11 | Hooking on the Golden Knights (Kaedan Korczak): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% LAK |
| P3 2:54 | Holding the stick on the Kings (Quinton Byfield): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% VGK |
When it happened
Golden Knights’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 14:07 | Corey Perry missed the net with a snap shot from 10 feetShooting · 21% chance | +4% VGK | – |
| 2 | P1 11:38 | Jack Eichel scored on a wrist shot from 21 feetShooting · 9% chance | +15% VGK | – |
| 3 | P1 11:15 | Tripping on the Golden Knights (Keegan Kolesar): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% LAK | – |
| 4 | P1 8:11 | Mark Stone scored on a backhand shot from 10 feetShooting · 7% chance | +12% VGK | – |
| 5 | P1 6:31 | Pavel Dorofeyev scored on a wrist shot from 19 feetShooting · 15% chance | +7% VGK | – |
| 6 | P1 6:11 | Mitch Marner scored on a slap shot from 23 feetShooting · 11% chance | +4% VGK | – |
| 7 | P1 4:57 | Trevor Moore scored on a wrist shot from 12 feetShooting · 9% chance | +4% LAK | – |
| 8 | P1 3:08 | Adrian Kempe missed the net with a between-the-legs shot from 9 feetShooting · 36% chance | +3% 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
Kings 56% · Golden Knights 44%
- Final margin
- Golden Knights by 3
- Luck in goals
- 3.3 for the Golden Knights
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Kings by 0.3
- Replay with same day's form
- Kings 64% · Golden Knights 36% 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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