2026-27 regular season · October 6, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Islanders at Rangers, Oct 6, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Rangers beat the Islanders 5–2, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 7 of 10.
The biggest swing (P2, 2:53 left): Oliver Bjorkstrand scored on a wrist shot from 20 feet, worth 21 points of win probability to the Rangers.
Final
 New York Islanders | 2 |
|---|---|
 New York Rangers | 5 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +31 Rangers lucky · −31 Islanders
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. Islanders win 3, Rangers win 7.
- 1 NYI 4 NYR 1
- 2 NYI 5 NYR 4
- 3 NYI 1 NYR 0
- 4 NYI 1 NYR 2
- 5 NYI 2 NYR 3
- 6 NYI 3 NYR 5
- 7 NYI 1 NYR 4
- 8 NYI 2 NYR 5
- 9 NYI 0 NYR 4
- 10 NYI 0 NYR 5
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Rangers by 0.4, 56% to win. The Rangers won by 3: the pick was right. The final margin was 2.6 goals from ours; 26% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Islanders win | 43.8% |
| Rangers win | 56.2% |
| Middle 50%: Islanders by 1 to Rangers by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Islanders by 4 to Rangers by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Islanders by 4 to Rangers by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Rangers by 1 | 21.8% |
| Exactly Islanders by 1 | 19.0% |
| Exactly Rangers by 3 | 13.7% |
| Exactly Rangers by 2 | 10.6% |
| Exactly Islanders by 3 | 9.6% |
Most of the distance between a forecast and a final score is luck: a hot goalie, a post or a deflection moves a hockey score more than anything known before the game. Made Tue, Oct 6, 5:12 pm ET and frozen at puck drop. How our predictions have done
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
Islanders win 31% of them, Rangers 69%. The line is what actually happened: Rangers by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Islanders by 3+ | 7.0% |
| Islanders by 2 | 6.1% |
| Islanders by 1 | 17.7% |
| Rangers by 1 | 19.3% |
| Rangers by 2 | 13.1% |
| Rangers by 3+ | 36.8% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Islanders | 31 | 2 | 1.99 | +0.01 |
 Rangers | 38 | 3 | 3.47 | −0.47 |
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 12:39 | Interference on the Rangers (Cole Beaudoin): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% NYI |
| P1 7:19 | Holding on the Islanders (Victor Eklund): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NYR |
| P1 3:03 | Slashing on the Rangers (Alexis Lafrenière): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NYI |
| P2 17:58 | Hooking on the Rangers (Eeli Tolvanen): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% NYI |
| P2 4:32 | Holding on the Islanders (Brayden Schenn): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% NYR |
| P3 15:35 | Holding on the Rangers (Tye Kartye): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% NYI |
| P3 0:13 | Roughing on the Islanders (Adam Pelech): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% NYR |
When it happened
Rangers’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 13:20 | Oliver Bjorkstrand scored on a slap shot from 31 feetShooting · 6% chance | +15% NYR | – |
| 2 | P1 6:38 | Will Cuylle missed the net with a snap shot from 3 feetShooting · 38% chance | +5% NYI | – |
| 3 | P2 19:35 | Alexis Lafrenière scored on a snap shot from 36 feetShooting · 5% chance | +13% NYR | – |
| 4 | P2 17:04 | Bo Horvat scored on a snap shot from 22 feetShooting · 15% chance | +12% NYI | – |
| 5 | P2 15:08 | Calum Ritchie scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 6% chance | +18% NYI | – |
| 6 | P2 4:32 | Holding on the Islanders (Brayden Schenn): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +5% NYR | – |
| 7 | P2 3:19 | J.T. Miller’s snap shot from 4 feet was savedShooting · 46% chance | +11% NYI | – |
| 8 | P2 2:53 | Oliver Bjorkstrand scored on a wrist shot from 20 feetShooting · 13% chance | +21% NYR | – |
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
Islanders 7% · Rangers 93%
- Final margin
- Rangers by 3
- Luck in goals
- 0.3 for the Rangers
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Rangers by 2.7
- Replay with same day's form
- Islanders 31% · Rangers 69% 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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