2026-27 regular season · October 10, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Mammoth at Sabres, Oct 10, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Mammoth beat the Sabres 4–1, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 7 of 10.
The biggest swing (P2, 4:37 left): Nick Schmaltz scored on a wrist shot from 8 feet, worth 21 points of win probability to the Mammoth.
Final
 Utah Mammoth | 4 |
|---|---|
 Buffalo Sabres | 1 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +31 Mammoth lucky · −31 Sabres
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. Mammoth win 7, Sabres win 3.
- 1 UTA 7 BUF 1
- 2 UTA 6 BUF 1
- 3 UTA 4 BUF 1
- 4 UTA 6 BUF 3
- 5 UTA 7 BUF 5
- 6 UTA 4 BUF 3
- 7 UTA 5 BUF 4
- 8 UTA 5 BUF 6
- 9 UTA 5 BUF 7
- 10 UTA 2 BUF 5
Our prediction before puck drop
We had it even, a coin flip. The Mammoth won by 3. The final margin was 3.0 goals from ours; 16% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Mammoth win | 49.8% |
| Sabres win | 50.2% |
| Middle 50%: Mammoth by 2 to Sabres by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Mammoth by 4 to Sabres by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Mammoth by 5 to Sabres by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Sabres by 1 | 20.9% |
| Exactly Mammoth by 1 | 20.3% |
| Exactly Sabres by 3 | 11.7% |
| Exactly Mammoth by 3 | 11.5% |
| Exactly Mammoth by 2 | 10.2% |
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 Sat, Oct 10, 12:07 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 4,000.2 replays ended
Mammoth win 69% of them, Sabres 31%. The line is what actually happened: Mammoth by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Mammoth by 3+ | 42.6% |
| Mammoth by 2 | 10.0% |
| Mammoth by 1 | 15.9% |
| Sabres by 1 | 16.4% |
| Sabres by 2 | 6.2% |
| Sabres by 3+ | 8.9% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Mammoth | 56 | 4 | 4.11 | −0.11 |
 Sabres | 39 | 1 | 2.99 | −1.99 |
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 18:28 | Slashing on the Sabres (Tage Thompson): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% UTA |
| P1 12:24 | Hooking on the Mammoth (Logan Cooley): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% BUF |
| P2 14:46 | Hooking on the Sabres (Josh Doan): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% UTA |
| P2 5:40 | Delaying game puck over glass on the Sabres (Owen Power): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% UTA |
| P3 19:28 | Holding on the Sabres (Olen Zellweger): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% UTA |
| P3 13:53 | Cross checking on the Mammoth (Vincent Trocheck): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% BUF |
| P3 10:41 | Holding on the Mammoth (Andrew Peeke): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% BUF |
| P3 9:55 | Hooking on the Sabres (Jack Quinn): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% UTA |
| P3 3:38 | Hooking on the Mammoth (Kevin Stenlund): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% BUF |
When it happened
Sabres’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 70%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 12:24 | Hooking on the Mammoth (Logan Cooley): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% BUF | – |
| 2 | P1 12:00 | Tage Thompson scored on a wrist shot from 21 feetShooting · 5% chance | +16% BUF | – |
| 3 | P1 9:48 | Kailer Yamamoto scored on a wrist shot from 2 feetShooting · 69% chance | +5% UTA | – |
| 4 | P2 14:46 | Hooking on the Sabres (Josh Doan): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +5% UTA | – |
| 5 | P2 5:40 | Delaying game puck over glass on the Sabres (Owen Power): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +5% UTA | – |
| 6 | P2 4:37 | Nick Schmaltz scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 11% chance | +21% UTA | – |
| 7 | P2 2:36 | Anders Lee scored on a backhand shot from 7 feetShooting · 10% chance | +15% UTA | – |
| 8 | P3 18:15 | John Marino scored on a slap shot from 53 feetShooting · 4% chance | +6% UTA | – |
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
Mammoth 81% · Sabres 19%
- Final margin
- Mammoth by 3
- Luck in goals
- 1.4 for the Mammoth
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Mammoth by 1.6
- Replay with same day's form
- Mammoth 69% · Sabres 31% 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 2, 2026-27
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