luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · March 31, 2026

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

Stars at Bruins, Mar 31, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Bruins beat the Stars 6–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Bruins win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 21 points of win probability to the Bruins.

The biggest swing (P3, 19:47 left): Elias Lindholm scored on a wrist shot from 40 feet, worth 24 points of win probability to the Bruins.

Final

Dallas Stars 3
Boston Bruins 6

March 31, 2026 · TD Garden

Luck index +41 Bruins lucky · −41 Stars

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. Stars win 4, Bruins win 6.

  1. 1 DAL 5 BOS 2
  2. 2 DAL 4 BOS 2
  3. 3 DAL 3 BOS 2
  4. 4 DAL 3 BOS 2
  5. 5 DAL 1 BOS 2
  6. 6 DAL 1 BOS 2
  7. 7 DAL 4 BOS 6
  8. 8 DAL 2 BOS 5
  9. 9 DAL 2 BOS 5
  10. 10 DAL 1 BOS 5

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

Stars win 41% of them, Bruins 59%. The line is what actually happened: Bruins by 3.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Stars by 3+12.4%
Stars by 28.0%
Stars by 120.2%
Bruins by 121.3%
Bruins by 210.4%
Bruins by 3+27.6%

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 +0.8 goals to the Bruins: the final margin was Bruins by 3, without the luck Bruins by 2.2. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Stars2832.65+0.35
Bruins3743.08+0.92

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 12:32 Interference on the Bruins (Nikita Zadorov): 2 minutes on the power play +4% DAL
P1 3:11 Tripping on the Stars (Jason Robertson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BOS
P2 1:43 Delaying game puck over glass on the Stars (Jamie Benn): 2 minutes on the power play +6% BOS
P3 19:00 Interference on the Bruins (Viktor Arvidsson): 2 minutes on the power play +5% DAL
P3 2:19 Tripping on the Bruins (Hampus Lindholm): 2 minutes on the power play 0% DAL

When it happened

Bruins’ 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 Bruins were ahead in it, below while the Stars were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 15:34 Marat Khusnutdinov missed the net with a snap shot from 5 feetShooting · 33% chance +5% DAL –
2 P1 10:02 Marat Khusnutdinov scored on a wrist shot from 19 feetShooting · 15% chance +14% BOS –
3 P1 1:09 Viktor Arvidsson scored on a wrist shot from 3 feetShooting · 31% chance +10% BOS –
4 P2 15:11 Jamie Benn scored on a wrist shot from 4 feetShooting · 31% chance +10% DAL –
5 P2 3:07 Matt Duchene scored on a slap shot from 4 feetShooting · 38% chance +15% DAL –
6 P2 1:43 Delaying game puck over glass on the Stars (Jamie Benn): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% BOS –
7 P3 19:47 Elias Lindholm scored on a wrist shot from 40 feetShooting · 3% chance +24% BOS –
8 P3 14:09 Henri Jokiharju scored on a snap shot from 30 feetShooting · 10% chance +13% BOS –

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

Stars 12% · Bruins 88%

Final margin
Bruins by 3
Luck in goals
0.8 for the Bruins
Luck-adjusted margin
Bruins by 2.2
Replay with same day's form
Stars 41% · Bruins 59% 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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