luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · March 3, 2026

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

Golden Knights at Sabres, Mar 3, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Sabres beat the Golden Knights 3–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Sabres win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 51 points of win probability to the Sabres.

The biggest swing (P2, 19:14 left): Owen Power scored on a wrist shot from 61 feet, worth 14 points of win probability to the Sabres.

Final

Vegas Golden Knights 2
Buffalo Sabres 3

March 3, 2026 · KeyBank Center

Luck index +54 Sabres 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, Sabres win 5.

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

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 4,000.1 replays ended

Golden Knights win 54% of them, Sabres 46%. The line is what actually happened: Sabres by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Golden Knights by 3+24.9%
Golden Knights by 29.5%
Golden Knights by 119.3%
Sabres by 119.2%
Sabres by 28.2%
Sabres by 3+18.9%

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 +0.9 goals to the Sabres: the final margin was Sabres by 1, without the luck Sabres by 0.1. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Golden Knights4824.53−2.53
Sabres4533.40−0.40

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 12:21 Tripping on the Sabres (Alex Tuch): 2 minutes on the power play +3% VGK
P3 7:10 Delaying game puck over glass on the Golden Knights (Rasmus Andersson): 2 minutes on the power play +5% BUF

When it happened

Sabres’ chance of winning

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 Sabres were ahead in it, below while the Golden Knights were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 15:58 Jason Zucker scored on a snap shot from 7 feetShooting · 22% chance +12% BUF –
2 P1 11:47 Braeden Bowman missed the net with a snap shot from 5 feetShooting · 38% chance +6% BUF –
3 P1 11:33 Braeden Bowman’s snap shot from 4 feet was savedShooting · 48% chance +8% BUF –
4 P2 19:14 Owen Power scored on a wrist shot from 61 feetShooting · 1% chance +14% BUF –
5 P2 14:16 Tage Thompson scored on a wrist shot from 28 feetShooting · 8% chance +7% BUF –
6 P2 13:10 Ivan Barbashev scored on a wraparound from 3 feetShooting · 15% chance +7% VGK –
7 P2 11:33 Pavel Dorofeyev scored on a wrist shot from 21 feetShooting · 14% chance +13% VGK –
8 P3 12:47 Pavel Dorofeyev’s snap shot from 5 feet was savedShooting · 35% chance +10% BUF –

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 47% · Sabres 53%

Final margin
Sabres by 1
Luck in goals
0.9 for the Sabres
Luck-adjusted margin
Sabres by 0.1
Replay with same day's form
Golden Knights 54% · Sabres 46% 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 22 2025-26 games · Golden Knights · Sabres

More from week 22, 2025-26

Every game of week 22, 2025-26