luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 12, 2026

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

Golden Knights at Wild, Oct 12, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Wild beat the Golden Knights 4–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Wild win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 31 points of win probability to the Wild.

The biggest swing (P3, 10:35 left): William Karlsson scored on a snap shot from 20 feet, worth 16 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.

Final

Vegas Golden Knights 2
Minnesota Wild 4

October 12, 2026 · Grand Casino Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: even

Luck index +44 Wild lucky · −44 Golden Knights

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. Golden Knights win 4, Wild win 6.

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

Our prediction before puck drop

We had it even, a coin flip. The Wild won by 2. The final margin was 2.0 goals from ours; 39% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Golden Knights win50.4%
Wild win49.6%
Middle 50%: Golden Knights by 2 to Wild by 250%
Middle 90%: Golden Knights by 4 to Wild by 490%
Middle 95%: Golden Knights by 5 to Wild by 595%
Exactly Wild by 120.8%
Exactly Golden Knights by 120.4%
Exactly Golden Knights by 311.6%
Exactly Wild by 311.6%
Exactly Golden Knights by 210.3%

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 Mon, Oct 12, 4:07 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 3,999.8 replays ended

Golden Knights win 44% of them, Wild 56%. The line is what actually happened: Wild by 2.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Golden Knights by 3+15.2%
Golden Knights by 28.8%
Golden Knights by 119.6%
Wild by 119.6%
Wild by 210.1%
Wild by 3+26.6%

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 +0.7 goals to the Wild: the final margin was Wild by 2, without the luck Wild by 1.3. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Golden Knights4423.23−1.23
Wild4633.32−0.32

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 13:18 Hooking on the Wild (Danila Yurov): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P1 5:45 Tripping on the Golden Knights (Dylan Coghlan): 2 minutes on the power play +4% MIN
P1 1:46 Tripping on the Wild (Jesper Wallstedt): 2 minutes on the power play +1% VGK
P2 8:46 Slashing on the Wild (Blake Coleman): 2 minutes on the power play +3% VGK
P3 10:35 Delaying game face off violation on the Wild (Danila Yurov): 2 minutes on the power play +5% VGK
P3 0:55 Tripping on the Wild (Blake Coleman): 2 minutes on the power play +1% VGK

When it happened

Wild’ 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 Wild were ahead in it, below while the Golden Knights were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 18:45 Brett Howden’s tip from 8 feet was savedShooting · 11% chanceBrett Howden’s wrist shot from 5 feet was savedShooting · 22% chance +5% MIN –
2 P1 8:10 Matt Boldy scored on a wrist shot from 13 feetShooting · 14% chance +15% MIN –
3 P1 5:28 Maxim Shabanov scored on a wrist shot from 41 feetShooting · 3% chance +13% MIN –
4 P1 3:03 Danila Yurov scored on a snap shot from 13 feetShooting · 16% chance +7% MIN –
5 P2 17:23 Rasmus Andersson scored on a slap shot from 51 feetShooting · 3% chance +8% VGK –
6 P3 10:35 William Karlsson scored on a snap shot from 20 feetShooting · 15% chanceDelaying game face off violation on the Wild (Danila Yurov): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +16% VGK –
7 P3 10:12 Mark Stone’s wrist shot from 8 feet was savedShooting · 23% chance +7% MIN –
8 P3 9:56 Mark Stone’s slap shot from 10 feet was savedShooting · 30% chance +10% MIN –

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

Golden Knights 24% · Wild 76%

Final margin
Wild by 2
Luck in goals
0.7 for the Wild
Luck-adjusted margin
Wild by 1.3
Replay with same day's form
Golden Knights 44% · Wild 56% 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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