luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 6, 2026 · OT

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

Wild at Sabres, Oct 6, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Sabres beat the Wild 3–2, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 7 of 10. The Wild had the bounces: shooting alone was worth 30 points of win probability to the Wild.

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

Final (OT)

Minnesota Wild 2
Buffalo Sabres 3

October 6, 2026 · KeyBank Center

Our prediction before puck drop: even

Luck index +28 Sabres lucky · −28 Wild

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 3, Sabres win 7.

  1. 1 MIN 2 BUF 0
  2. 2 MIN 4 BUF 3
  3. 3 MIN 3 BUF 2
  4. 4 MIN 0 BUF 1
  5. 5 MIN 1 BUF 2
  6. 6 MIN 1 BUF 3
  7. 7 MIN 2 BUF 5
  8. 8 MIN 0 BUF 3
  9. 9 MIN 1 BUF 5
  10. 10 MIN 0 BUF 5

Our prediction before puck drop

We had it even, a coin flip. The Sabres won by 1. The final margin was 1.0 goal from ours; 79% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Wild win49.3%
Sabres win50.7%
Middle 50%: Wild by 2 to Sabres by 250%
Middle 90%: Wild by 4 to Sabres by 490%
Middle 95%: Wild by 4 to Sabres by 595%
Exactly Sabres by 121.0%
Exactly Wild by 120.2%
Exactly Sabres by 311.9%
Exactly Wild by 311.3%
Exactly Wild by 210.1%

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.

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 3,999.8 replays ended

Wild win 28% of them, Sabres 72%. The line is what actually happened: Sabres by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Wild by 3+4.8%
Wild by 25.0%
Wild by 117.9%
Sabres by 120.9%
Sabres by 213.1%
Sabres by 3+38.4%

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 +0.3 goals to the Wild: the final margin was Sabres by 1, without the luck Sabres by 1.3. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Wild2721.44+0.56
Sabres4023.18−1.18

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 15:57 Hooking on the Wild (Jonas Brodin): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P1 9:30 Cross checking on the Sabres (Zach Benson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% MIN
P1 2:01 High sticking on the Sabres (Rasmus Dahlin): 2 minutes on the power play +4% MIN
P2 12:32 Slashing on the Sabres (Ryan McLeod): 2 minutes on the power play +5% MIN
P2 6:43 Interference on the Sabres (Peyton Krebs): 2 minutes on the power play +5% MIN
P3 3:51 High sticking on the Wild (Olli Maatta): 2 minutes on the power play +9% BUF

When it happened

Sabres’ chance of winning

As low as 9% 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 Sabres were ahead in it, below while the Wild were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P2 6:07 Danila Yurov scored on a slap shot from 34 feetShooting · 6% chance +22% MIN –
2 P2 4:22 Maxim Shabanov scored on a snap shot from 15 feetShooting · 8% chance +15% MIN –
3 P3 16:05 Noah Ostlund scored on a deflected shot from 4 feetShooting · 10% chance +14% BUF –
4 P3 10:22 Tage Thompson scored on a snap shot from 33 feetShooting · 11% chance +29% BUF –
5 P3 3:51 High sticking on the Wild (Olli Maatta): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +9% BUF –
6 P3 0:52 Tage Thompson’s wrist shot from 6 feet was savedShooting · 24% chance +11% MIN –
7 P3 0:51 Tage Thompson’s wrist shot from 5 feet was savedShooting · 28% chance +12% MIN –
8 OT The Sabres won in overtimeOvertime · overtime is close to a coin flip +49% BUF –

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 19% · Sabres 81%

Final margin
Sabres by 1
Luck in goals
0.3 for the Wild
Luck-adjusted margin
Sabres by 1.3
Replay with same day's form
Wild 28% · Sabres 72% 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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