2025-26 regular season · March 12, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Red Wings at Lightning, Mar 12, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Lightning beat the Red Wings 4–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Lightning win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 28 points of win probability to the Lightning.
The biggest swing (P2, 19:11 left): Jake Guentzel scored on a snap shot from 29 feet, worth 16 points of win probability to the Lightning.
Final
 Detroit Red Wings | 1 |
|---|---|
 Tampa Bay Lightning | 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +41 Lightning lucky · −41 Red Wings
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. Red Wings win 4, Lightning win 6.
- 1 DET 3 TBL 0
- 2 DET 4 TBL 2
- 3 DET 2 TBL 1
- 4 DET 3 TBL 2
- 5 DET 4 TBL 5
- 6 DET 3 TBL 4
- 7 DET 2 TBL 4
- 8 DET 1 TBL 4
- 9 DET 2 TBL 5
- 10 DET 1 TBL 6
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 3,999.8 replays ended
Red Wings win 41% of them, Lightning 59%. The line is what actually happened: Lightning by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Red Wings by 3+ | 13.3% |
| Red Wings by 2 | 8.2% |
| Red Wings by 1 | 19.8% |
| Lightning by 1 | 20.6% |
| Lightning by 2 | 11.5% |
| Lightning by 3+ | 26.6% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Red Wings | 42 | 1 | 2.54 | −1.54 |
 Lightning | 48 | 3 | 3.00 | 0.00 |
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 3:46 | Hooking on the Lightning (Nikita Kucherov): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% DET |
| P1 0:13 | Holding the stick on the Red Wings (Marco Kasper): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% TBL |
When it happened
Lightning’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 3:46 | Hooking on the Lightning (Nikita Kucherov): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% DET | – |
| 2 | P1 0:13 | Holding the stick on the Red Wings (Marco Kasper): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% TBL | – |
| 3 | P2 19:11 | Jake Guentzel scored on a snap shot from 29 feetShooting · 13% chance | +16% TBL | – |
| 4 | P2 15:46 | James van Riemsdyk’s snap shot from 20 feet was savedShooting · 18% chance | +3% TBL | – |
| 5 | P2 13:30 | Emmitt Finnie missed the net with a snap shot from 8 feetShooting · 21% chance | +4% TBL | – |
| 6 | P3 18:25 | Gage Goncalves scored on a deflected shot from 9 feetShooting · 10% chance | +13% TBL | – |
| 7 | P3 12:55 | J.T. Compher scored on a tip from 8 feetShooting · 7% chance | +13% DET | – |
| 8 | P3 3:38 | Gage Goncalves scored on a deflected shot from 9 feetShooting · 10% chance | +7% TBL | – |
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
Red Wings 21% · Lightning 79%
- Final margin
- Lightning by 3
- Luck in goals
- 1.7 for the Lightning
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Lightning by 1.3
- Replay with same day's form
- Red Wings 41% · Lightning 59% 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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