2026-27 regular season · October 12, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Panthers at Sabres, Oct 12, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Sabres beat the Panthers 5–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Sabres win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 32 points of win probability to the Sabres.
The biggest swing (P3, 12:45 left): Noah Ostlund scored on a wrist shot from 6 feet, worth 21 points of win probability to the Sabres.
Final
 Florida Panthers | 3 |
|---|---|
 Buffalo Sabres | 5 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +50 Sabres lucky · −50 Panthers
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. Panthers win 5, Sabres win 5.
- 1 FLA 6 BUF 2
- 2 FLA 5 BUF 2
- 3 FLA 3 BUF 1
- 4 FLA 2 BUF 1
- 5 FLA 6 BUF 5
- 6 FLA 2 BUF 3
- 7 FLA 3 BUF 4
- 8 FLA 2 BUF 4
- 9 FLA 1 BUF 4
- 10 FLA 2 BUF 6
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Sabres by 0.1, 52% to win. The Sabres won by 2: the pick was right. The final margin was 1.9 goals from ours; 49% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Panthers win | 47.8% |
| Sabres win | 52.2% |
| Middle 50%: Panthers by 2 to Sabres by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Panthers by 4 to Sabres by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Panthers by 4 to Sabres by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Sabres by 1 | 21.2% |
| Exactly Panthers by 1 | 19.9% |
| Exactly Sabres by 3 | 12.4% |
| Exactly Panthers by 3 | 10.8% |
| Exactly Sabres by 2 | 10.0% |
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, 12:01 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 4,000.1 replays ended
Panthers win 50% of them, Sabres 50%. The line is what actually happened: Sabres by 2.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Panthers by 3+ | 22.5% |
| Panthers by 2 | 9.3% |
| Panthers by 1 | 18.4% |
| Sabres by 1 | 18.2% |
| Sabres by 2 | 10.5% |
| Sabres by 3+ | 21.0% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Panthers | 46 | 3 | 3.68 | −0.68 |
 Sabres | 42 | 5 | 3.34 | +1.66 |
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 4:45 | Holding on the Panthers (Dmitry Kulikov): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% BUF |
| P1 2:59 | Delaying game puck over glass on the Panthers (Radko Gudas): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% BUF |
| P2 16:34 | Interference on the Panthers (Aaron Ekblad): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% BUF |
| P2 14:05 | Tripping on the Sabres (Olen Zellweger): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% FLA |
| P2 7:12 | Holding on the Sabres (Beck Malenstyn): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% FLA |
| P3 13:45 | Holding the stick on the Panthers (Aaron Ekblad): 2 minutes on the power play | +7% BUF |
| P3 6:21 | Slashing on the Sabres (Josh Norris): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% FLA |
| P3 3:34 | Hooking on the Panthers (Eetu Luostarinen): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% BUF |
| P3 1:52 | High sticking on the Sabres (Josh Norris): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% FLA |
When it happened
Sabres’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 14:02 | Josh Doan scored on a wrist shot from 33 feetShooting · 4% chance | +15% BUF | – |
| 2 | P1 9:00 | Anton Lundell scored on a wrist shot from 10 feetShooting · 8% chance | +15% FLA | – |
| 3 | P1 4:05 | Rasmus Dahlin scored on a slap shot from 42 feetShooting · 9% chance | +16% BUF | – |
| 4 | P2 8:35 | Ryan McLeod scored on a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 17% chance | +18% BUF | – |
| 5 | P2 6:19 | Sam Reinhart scored on a wrist shot from 14 feetShooting · 18% chance | +18% FLA | – |
| 6 | P3 13:45 | Holding the stick on the Panthers (Aaron Ekblad): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +7% BUF | – |
| 7 | P3 12:45 | Noah Ostlund scored on a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 27% chance | +21% BUF | – |
| 8 | P3 6:40 | Tage Thompson scored on a wrist shot from 32 feetShooting · 9% chance | +10% 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
Panthers 34% · Sabres 66%
- Final margin
- Sabres by 2
- Luck in goals
- 1.3 for the Sabres
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Sabres by 0.7
- Replay with same day's form
- Panthers 50% · Sabres 50% 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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