2025-26 regular season · April 4, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Wild at Senators, Apr 4, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Wild beat the Senators 4–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Wild win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 16 points of win probability to the Wild.
The biggest swing (P1, 10:15 left): Jonas Brodin scored on a wrist shot from 49 feet, worth 17 points of win probability to the Wild.
Final
 Minnesota Wild | 4 |
|---|---|
 Ottawa Senators | 1 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +47 Wild lucky · −47 Senators
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 5, Senators win 5.
- 1 MIN 5 OTT 1
- 2 MIN 4 OTT 1
- 3 MIN 4 OTT 2
- 4 MIN 5 OTT 4
- 5 MIN 4 OTT 3
- 6 MIN 1 OTT 2
- 7 MIN 1 OTT 2
- 8 MIN 1 OTT 2
- 9 MIN 2 OTT 4
- 10 MIN 2 OTT 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 4,000.1 replays ended
Wild win 53% of them, Senators 47%. The line is what actually happened: Wild by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Wild by 3+ | 19.0% |
| Wild by 2 | 10.6% |
| Wild by 1 | 23.5% |
| Senators by 1 | 24.1% |
| Senators by 2 | 10.1% |
| Senators by 3+ | 12.6% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Wild | 37 | 4 | 2.17 | +1.83 |
 Senators | 45 | 1 | 2.07 | −1.07 |
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 7:31 | Holding on the Wild (Joel Eriksson Ek): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% OTT |
| P1 0:13 | High sticking on the Wild (Zach Bogosian): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% OTT |
| P2 0:33 | Interference on the Senators (Artem Zub): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% MIN |
When it happened
Senators’ 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 15:56 | Kirill Kaprizov’s wrist shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 18% chance | +3% OTT | – |
| 2 | P1 10:15 | Jonas Brodin scored on a wrist shot from 49 feetShooting · 1% chance | +17% MIN | – |
| 3 | P1 9:42 | Kirill Kaprizov hit the left post with a snap shot from 10 feetShooting · 16% chance | +2% OTT | – |
| 4 | P1 7:31 | Holding on the Wild (Joel Eriksson Ek): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% OTT | – |
| 5 | P1 4:25 | Ryan Hartman scored on a wrist shot from 12 feetShooting · 11% chance | +14% MIN | – |
| 6 | P1 4:01 | Dylan Cozens’s wrist shot from 10 feet was savedShooting · 13% chance | +2% MIN | – |
| 7 | P1 0:13 | High sticking on the Wild (Zach Bogosian): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% OTT | – |
| 8 | P2 4:29 | Ryan Hartman scored on a wrist shot from 19 feetShooting · 13% chance | +7% MIN | – |
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 71% · Senators 29%
- Final margin
- Wild by 3
- Luck in goals
- 2.2 for the Wild
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Wild by 0.8
- Replay with same day's form
- Wild 53% · Senators 47% 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.
More from week 26, 2025-26
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