2025-26 regular season · March 6, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Wild at Golden Knights, Mar 6, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Wild beat the Golden Knights 4–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Wild win 4 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 24 points of win probability to the Wild.
The biggest swing (P2, 14:42 left): Mats Zuccarello scored on a wrist shot from 23 feet, worth 18 points of win probability to the Wild.
Final
 Minnesota Wild | 4 |
|---|---|
 Vegas Golden Knights | 2 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +57 Wild lucky · −57 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. Wild win 4, Golden Knights win 6.
- 1 MIN 7 VGK 3
- 2 MIN 3 VGK 1
- 3 MIN 3 VGK 2
- 4 MIN 3 VGK 2
- 5 MIN 3 VGK 4
- 6 MIN 2 VGK 3
- 7 MIN 4 VGK 6
- 8 MIN 2 VGK 5
- 9 MIN 2 VGK 5
- 10 MIN 0 VGK 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 3,999.9 replays ended
Wild win 43% of them, Golden Knights 57%. The line is what actually happened: Wild by 2.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Wild by 3+ | 15.1% |
| Wild by 2 | 9.0% |
| Wild by 1 | 19.2% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 21.2% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 10.7% |
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 24.9% |
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.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Wild | 39 | 4 | 2.42 | +1.58 |
 Golden Knights | 50 | 2 | 3.01 | −1.01 |
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 5:02 | Holding on the Golden Knights (Braeden Bowman): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% MIN |
| P3 18:38 | Slashing on the Wild (Zach Bogosian): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% VGK |
When it happened
Golden Knights’ 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 5:02 | Holding on the Golden Knights (Braeden Bowman): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% MIN | – |
| 2 | P1 1:46 | Cole Smith’s snap shot from 14 feet was savedShooting · 14% chance | +2% MIN | – |
| 3 | P2 17:25 | Pavel Dorofeyev’s slap shot from 24 feet was savedShooting · 17% chance | +3% MIN | – |
| 4 | P2 15:14 | Mitch Marner’s tip from 7 feet was savedShooting · 12% chance | +2% MIN | – |
| 5 | P2 14:42 | Mats Zuccarello scored on a wrist shot from 23 feetShooting · 11% chance | +18% MIN | – |
| 6 | P2 11:53 | Zach Bogosian scored on a slap shot from 44 feetShooting · 4% chance | +16% MIN | – |
| 7 | P2 11:35 | Michael McCarron scored on a tip from 8 feetShooting · 9% chance | +9% MIN | – |
| 8 | P3 17:43 | Pavel Dorofeyev scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 9% chance | +6% 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
Wild 75% · Golden Knights 25%
- Final margin
- Wild by 2
- Luck in goals
- 0.8 for the Wild
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Wild by 1.2
- Replay with same day's form
- Wild 43% · Golden Knights 57% 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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