2026-27 regular season · October 8, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Blackhawks at Islanders, Oct 8, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Islanders beat the Blackhawks 4–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Islanders win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 15 points of win probability to the Islanders.
The biggest swing (P1, 0:59 left): Bo Horvat scored on a snap shot from 5 feet, worth 14 points of win probability to the Islanders.
Final
 Chicago Blackhawks | 1 |
|---|---|
 New York Islanders | 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +43 Islanders lucky · −43 Blackhawks
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. Blackhawks win 4, Islanders win 6.
- 1 CHI 4 NYI 1
- 2 CHI 3 NYI 1
- 3 CHI 1 NYI 0
- 4 CHI 3 NYI 2
- 5 CHI 1 NYI 2
- 6 CHI 2 NYI 3
- 7 CHI 1 NYI 2
- 8 CHI 1 NYI 3
- 9 CHI 1 NYI 4
- 10 CHI 1 NYI 5
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Islanders by 0.8, 63% to win. The Islanders won by 3: the pick was right. The final margin was 2.2 goals from ours; 33% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Blackhawks win | 37.4% |
| Islanders win | 62.6% |
| Middle 50%: Blackhawks by 1 to Islanders by 3 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Blackhawks by 3 to Islanders by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Blackhawks by 4 to Islanders by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Islanders by 1 | 22.4% |
| Exactly Blackhawks by 1 | 17.3% |
| Exactly Islanders by 3 | 15.9% |
| Exactly Islanders by 2 | 11.6% |
| Exactly Islanders by 4 | 7.9% |
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 Thu, Oct 8, 1:43 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 4,000 replays ended
Blackhawks win 43% of them, Islanders 57%. The line is what actually happened: Islanders by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Blackhawks by 3+ | 11.6% |
| Blackhawks by 2 | 8.7% |
| Blackhawks by 1 | 22.5% |
| Islanders by 1 | 23.9% |
| Islanders by 2 | 11.7% |
| Islanders by 3+ | 21.7% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Blackhawks | 35 | 1 | 2.10 | −1.10 |
 Islanders | 26 | 3 | 2.32 | +0.68 |
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 14:37 | Hooking on the Blackhawks (Wyatt Kaiser): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NYI |
| P1 12:34 | Interference goalkeeper on the Islanders (Anthony Duclair): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% CHI |
| P1 4:56 | Too many men on the ice on the Islanders (NYI): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% CHI |
| P1 1:02 | Hooking on the Blackhawks (Oliver Moore): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NYI |
| P2 7:42 | Interference on the Islanders (Scott Mayfield): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% CHI |
| P3 1:33 | Match penalty on the Blackhawks (Frank Nazar): 5 minutes on the power play | 0% NYI |
When it happened
Islanders’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 14:37 | Hooking on the Blackhawks (Wyatt Kaiser): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% NYI | – |
| 2 | P1 12:34 | Interference goalkeeper on the Islanders (Anthony Duclair): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% CHI | – |
| 3 | P1 12:20 | Tyler Bertuzzi missed the net with a tip from 5 feetShooting · 20% chance | +3% NYI | – |
| 4 | P1 4:56 | Too many men on the ice on the Islanders (NYI): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% CHI | – |
| 5 | P1 1:02 | Hooking on the Blackhawks (Oliver Moore): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% NYI | – |
| 6 | P1 0:59 | Bo Horvat scored on a snap shot from 5 feetShooting · 26% chance | +14% NYI | – |
| 7 | P2 13:16 | Emil Heineman scored on a snap shot from 34 feetShooting · 10% chance | +13% NYI | – |
| 8 | P2 10:22 | Anthony Duclair scored on a snap shot from 17 feetShooting · 10% chance | +7% NYI | – |
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
Blackhawks 15% · Islanders 85%
- Final margin
- Islanders by 3
- Luck in goals
- 1.6 for the Islanders
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Islanders by 1.4
- Replay with same day's form
- Blackhawks 43% · Islanders 57% 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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