luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 13, 2026

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

Canucks at Islanders, Oct 13, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Islanders beat the Canucks 3–2, 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 16 points of win probability to the Islanders.

The biggest swing (P3, 14:22 left): Kyle Palmieri scored on a wrist shot from 37 feet, worth 27 points of win probability to the Islanders.

Final

Vancouver Canucks 2
New York Islanders 3

October 13, 2026 · UBS Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: Islanders by 0.7

Luck index +42 Islanders lucky · −42 Canucks

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. Canucks win 4, Islanders win 6.

  1. 1 VAN 5 NYI 2
  2. 2 VAN 5 NYI 3
  3. 3 VAN 3 NYI 2
  4. 4 VAN 2 NYI 1
  5. 5 VAN 2 NYI 3
  6. 6 VAN 3 NYI 4
  7. 7 VAN 3 NYI 5
  8. 8 VAN 4 NYI 7
  9. 9 VAN 4 NYI 7
  10. 10 VAN 2 NYI 6

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Islanders by 0.7, 62% to win. The Islanders won by 1: the pick was right. The final margin was 0.3 goals from ours; 78% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Canucks win37.7%
Islanders win62.3%
Middle 50%: Canucks by 1 to Islanders by 350%
Middle 90%: Canucks by 3 to Islanders by 490%
Middle 95%: Canucks by 4 to Islanders by 595%
Exactly Islanders by 122.4%
Exactly Canucks by 117.4%
Exactly Islanders by 315.8%
Exactly Islanders by 211.6%
Exactly Canucks by 37.9%

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 Tue, Oct 13, 1:55 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 4,000.2 replays ended

Canucks win 42% of them, Islanders 58%. The line is what actually happened: Islanders by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Canucks by 3+14.5%
Canucks by 28.4%
Canucks by 118.9%
Islanders by 120.0%
Islanders by 211.0%
Islanders by 3+27.2%

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 +0.4 goals to the Islanders: the final margin was Islanders by 1, without the luck Islanders by 0.6. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Canucks4122.74−0.74
Islanders4633.23−0.23

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 13:56 High sticking on the Islanders (Brayden Schenn): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VAN
P1 8:18 Holding on the Islanders (Logan Stanley): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VAN
P1 0:51 Tripping on the Canucks (Luke Schenn): 2 minutes on the power play +3% NYI
P2 11:05 Tripping on the Canucks (Elias Pettersson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P2 2:32 Tripping on the Islanders (Kyle Palmieri): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VAN
P2 0:00 Unsportsmanlike conduct on the Islanders (Tony DeAngelo): 2 minutes on the power play +6% VAN
P3 1:41 Hooking on the Canucks (Zeev Buium): 2 minutes on the power play +6% NYI
P3 0:19 Tripping on the Islanders (Adam Pelech): 2 minutes on the power play +6% VAN

When it happened

Islanders’ 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 Islanders were ahead in it, below while the Canucks were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 5:03 Kyle Palmieri scored on a tip from 16 feetShooting · 7% chance +16% NYI –
2 P1 4:10 Matias Maccelli scored on a wrist shot from 23 feetShooting · 9% chance +13% NYI –
3 P2 12:08 Max Sasson scored on a wrist shot from 26 feetShooting · 6% chance +14% VAN –
4 P2 1:05 Brock Boeser scored on a wrist shot from 26 feetShooting · 11% chance +22% VAN –
5 P2 0:00 Unsportsmanlike conduct on the Islanders (Tony DeAngelo): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% VAN –
6 P3 14:22 Kyle Palmieri scored on a wrist shot from 37 feetShooting · 5% chance +27% NYI –
7 P3 1:41 Hooking on the Canucks (Zeev Buium): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% NYI –
8 P3 0:19 Tripping on the Islanders (Adam Pelech): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% VAN –

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

Canucks 40% · Islanders 60%

Final margin
Islanders by 1
Luck in goals
0.4 for the Islanders
Luck-adjusted margin
Islanders by 0.6
Replay with same day's form
Canucks 42% · Islanders 58% 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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