luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · March 22, 2026 · OT

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

Sabres at Ducks, Mar 22, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Ducks beat the Sabres 6–5, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Ducks win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: overtime alone was worth 49 points of win probability to the Ducks.

The biggest swing (OT): the Ducks won in overtime, worth 49 points of win probability to the Ducks.

Final (OT)

Buffalo Sabres 5
Anaheim Ducks 6

March 22, 2026 · Honda Center

Luck index +45 Ducks lucky · −45 Sabres

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. Sabres win 5, Ducks win 5.

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

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

Sabres win 45% of them, Ducks 55%. The line is what actually happened: Ducks by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Sabres by 3+17.6%
Sabres by 28.6%
Sabres by 119.1%
Ducks by 119.3%
Ducks by 29.8%
Ducks by 3+25.6%

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.

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 +0.5 goals to the Ducks: the final margin was Ducks by 1, without the luck Ducks by 0.5. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Sabres5253.27+1.73
Ducks5153.85+1.15

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 10:59 Too many men on the ice on the Sabres (BUF): 2 minutes on the power play +4% ANA
P1 8:51 Holding on the Sabres (Alex Lyon): 2 minutes on the power play +4% ANA
P1 6:33 Tripping on the Ducks (Tim Washe): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P2 9:54 Roughing on the Ducks (Jeffrey Viel): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P2 6:46 Tripping on the Ducks (Beckett Sennecke): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P3 18:57 Slashing on the Sabres (Bowen Byram): 2 minutes on the power play +2% ANA
P3 2:34 Tripping on the Sabres (Alex Tuch): 2 minutes on the power play +6% ANA

When it happened

Ducks’ chance of winning

As low as 7% and as high as 100%. 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 Ducks were ahead in it, below while the Sabres were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 10:33 Chris Kreider scored on a snap shot from 37 feetShooting · 6% chance +16% ANA –
2 P1 7:37 Jackson LaCombe scored on a wrist shot from 57 feetShooting · 2% chance +17% ANA –
3 P1 2:46 Josh Doan scored on a wrist shot from 10 feetShooting · 9% chance +16% BUF –
4 P2 17:25 Beckett Sennecke scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 17% chance +16% ANA –
5 P3 9:55 Owen Power scored on a snap shot from 49 feetShooting · 3% chance +31% BUF –
6 P3 8:23 Zach Benson scored on a snap shot from 10 feetShooting · 18% chance +28% BUF –
7 P3 1:44 Mikael Granlund scored on a snap shot from 26 feetShooting · 15% chance +37% ANA –
8 OT The Ducks won in overtimeOvertime · overtime is close to a coin flip +49% ANA –

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

Sabres 41% · Ducks 59%

Final margin
Ducks by 1
Luck in goals
0.5 for the Ducks
Luck-adjusted margin
Ducks by 0.5
Replay with same day's form
Sabres 45% · Ducks 55% 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.

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