luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 10, 2026 · SO

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

Stars at Penguins, Oct 10, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Penguins beat the Stars 2–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Penguins win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shootout alone was worth 51 points of win probability to the Penguins.

The biggest swing (SO): the Penguins won the shootout, worth 51 points of win probability to the Penguins.

Final (SO)

Dallas Stars 1
Pittsburgh Penguins 2

October 10, 2026 · PPG Paints Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: Penguins by 0.4

Luck index +50 Penguins lucky · −50 Stars

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. Stars win 5, Penguins win 5.

  1. 1 DAL 5 PIT 1
  2. 2 DAL 6 PIT 3
  3. 3 DAL 2 PIT 0
  4. 4 DAL 3 PIT 2
  5. 5 DAL 2 PIT 1
  6. 6 DAL 2 PIT 3
  7. 7 DAL 0 PIT 1
  8. 8 DAL 1 PIT 3
  9. 9 DAL 0 PIT 3
  10. 10 DAL 2 PIT 5

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Penguins by 0.4, 57% to win. The Penguins won by 1: the pick was right. The final margin was 0.6 goals from ours; 78% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Stars win42.6%
Penguins win57.4%
Middle 50%: Stars by 1 to Penguins by 250%
Middle 90%: Stars by 4 to Penguins by 490%
Middle 95%: Stars by 4 to Penguins by 595%
Exactly Penguins by 122.0%
Exactly Stars by 118.8%
Exactly Penguins by 314.1%
Exactly Penguins by 210.8%
Exactly Stars by 39.3%

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.

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 4,000 replays ended

Stars win 50% of them, Penguins 50%. The line is what actually happened: Penguins by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Stars by 3+19.0%
Stars by 29.7%
Stars by 121.2%
Penguins by 122.9%
Penguins by 210.3%
Penguins by 3+16.8%

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.

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 +1.4 goals to the Penguins: the final margin was Penguins by 1, without the luck Stars by 0.3. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Stars3512.79−1.79
Penguins3912.33−1.33

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 9:39 Tripping on the Penguins (Declan Carlile): 2 minutes on the power play +4% DAL
P1 5:25 Cross checking on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power play +4% PIT
P1 2:32 Slashing on the Stars (Mikko Rantanen): 2 minutes on the power play +4% PIT
P2 9:04 Delaying game puck over glass on the Stars (Miro Heiskanen): 2 minutes on the power play +5% PIT
P2 1:19 Interference on the Stars (Nils Lundkvist): 2 minutes on the power play +6% PIT
P3 16:35 Tripping on the Penguins (Hendrix Lapierre): 2 minutes on the power play +5% DAL
P3 6:30 Interference on the Stars (Lian Bichsel): 2 minutes on the power play +5% PIT
P3 5:39 Tripping on the Penguins (Rickard Rakell): 2 minutes on the power play +5% DAL

When it happened

Penguins’ chance of winning

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 Penguins were ahead in it, below while the Stars were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P2 1:19 Interference on the Stars (Nils Lundkvist): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% PIT –
2 P3 18:03 Connor Dewar scored on a backhand shot from 26 feetShooting · 5% chance +25% PIT –
3 P3 15:58 Jason Robertson missed the net with a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 26% chance +7% PIT –
4 P3 15:24 Jason Robertson’s wrist shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 27% chance +7% PIT –
5 P3 15:23 Jason Robertson’s wrist shot from 8 feet was savedShooting · 25% chance +7% PIT –
6 P3 0:41 Mikko Rantanen’s wrist shot from 24 feet was savedShooting · 12% chance +6% PIT –
7 P3 0:30 Tyler Seguin scored on a tip from 10 feetShooting · 10% chance +42% DAL –
8 SO The Penguins won the shootoutShootout · shootouts are close to coin flips +51% PIT –

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

Stars 59% · Penguins 41%

Final margin
Penguins by 1
Luck in goals
1.3 for the Penguins
Luck-adjusted margin
Stars by 0.3
Replay with same day's form
Stars 50% · Penguins 50% 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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