2025-26 regular season · February 27, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Golden Knights at Capitals, Feb 27, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Capitals beat the Golden Knights 3–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Capitals win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 43 points of win probability to the Capitals.
The biggest swing (P2, 19:11 left): Pierre-Luc Dubois scored on a snap shot from 36 feet, worth 18 points of win probability to the Capitals.
Final
 Vegas Golden Knights | 2 |
|---|---|
 Washington Capitals | 3 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +54 Capitals lucky · −54 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, Capitals win 5.
- 1 VGK 6 WSH 1
- 2 VGK 4 WSH 1
- 3 VGK 2 WSH 0
- 4 VGK 4 WSH 3
- 5 VGK 2 WSH 1
- 6 VGK 0 WSH 1
- 7 VGK 3 WSH 4
- 8 VGK 3 WSH 5
- 9 VGK 1 WSH 4
- 10 VGK 0 WSH 3
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 replays ended
Golden Knights win 54% of them, Capitals 46%. The line is what actually happened: Capitals by 1.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 23.1% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 10.4% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 20.5% |
| Capitals by 1 | 20.1% |
| Capitals by 2 | 9.7% |
| Capitals by 3+ | 16.3% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Golden Knights | 47 | 2 | 3.64 | −1.64 |
 Capitals | 44 | 3 | 3.04 | −0.04 |
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 7:13 | Too many men on the ice on the Golden Knights (VGK): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% WSH |
| P1 4:26 | Cross checking on the Capitals (Matt Roy): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% VGK |
| P2 15:19 | Hooking on the Golden Knights (Braeden Bowman): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% WSH |
| P2 14:02 | High sticking on the Golden Knights (Noah Hanifin): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% WSH |
| P2 3:16 | Slashing on the Capitals (Ryan Leonard): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% VGK |
| P3 14:34 | Cross checking on the Golden Knights (Kaedan Korczak): 2 minutes on the power play | +2% WSH |
| P3 11:45 | Too many men on the ice on the Capitals (WSH): 2 minutes on the power play | +2% VGK |
| P3 4:24 | High sticking on the Golden Knights (Mark Stone): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% WSH |
When it happened
Capitals’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P2 19:11 | Pierre-Luc Dubois scored on a snap shot from 36 feetShooting · 6% chance | +18% WSH | – |
| 2 | P2 16:37 | Pierre-Luc Dubois scored on a snap shot from 17 feetShooting · 13% chance | +12% WSH | – |
| 3 | P2 5:08 | Jakob Chychrun scored on a snap shot from 29 feetShooting · 6% chance | +7% WSH | – |
| 4 | P3 10:45 | Tomas Hertl scored on a tip from 21 feetShooting · 8% chance | +12% VGK | – |
| 5 | P3 4:24 | High sticking on the Golden Knights (Mark Stone): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +6% WSH | – |
| 6 | P3 3:36 | Mitch Marner’s wrist shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 16% chance | +6% WSH | – |
| 7 | P3 3:35 | Reilly Smith’s wrist shot from 12 feet was savedShooting · 13% chance | +5% WSH | – |
| 8 | P3 1:40 | Mark Stone’s deflected shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 12% chance | +5% WSH | – |
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 59% · Capitals 41%
- Final margin
- Capitals by 1
- Luck in goals
- 1.2 for the Capitals
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Golden Knights by 0.2
- Replay with same day's form
- Golden Knights 54% · Capitals 46% 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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