2026-27 regular season · October 15, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Flames at Golden Knights, Oct 15, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Golden Knights beat the Flames 6–2, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 6 of 10.
The biggest swing (P1, 19:35 left): Brett Howden scored on a snap shot from 32 feet, worth 14 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.
Final
 Calgary Flames | 2 |
|---|---|
 Vegas Golden Knights | 6 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +40 Golden Knights lucky · −40 Flames
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. Flames win 4, Golden Knights win 6.
- 1 CGY 8 VGK 4
- 2 CGY 7 VGK 4
- 3 CGY 7 VGK 6
- 4 CGY 3 VGK 2
- 5 CGY 2 VGK 3
- 6 CGY 2 VGK 3
- 7 CGY 2 VGK 4
- 8 CGY 3 VGK 6
- 9 CGY 2 VGK 5
- 10 CGY 1 VGK 7
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Golden Knights by 1.3, 72% to win. The Golden Knights won by 4: the pick was right. The final margin was 2.7 goals from ours; 21% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Flames win | 28.4% |
| Golden Knights win | 71.6% |
| Middle 50%: Flames by 1 to Golden Knights by 3 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Flames by 3 to Golden Knights by 5 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Flames by 4 to Golden Knights by 6 | 95% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 1 | 22.3% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 3 | 18.9% |
| Exactly Flames by 1 | 14.4% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 2 | 12.6% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 4 | 10.4% |
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 Thu, Oct 15, 8:42 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 replays ended
Flames win 40% of them, Golden Knights 60%. The line is what actually happened: Golden Knights by 4.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Flames by 3+ | 14.7% |
| Flames by 2 | 7.7% |
| Flames by 1 | 17.2% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 17.8% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 10.1% |
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 32.6% |
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.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Flames | 48 | 2 | 3.41 | −1.41 |
 Golden Knights | 42 | 6 | 3.80 | +2.20 |
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 12:02 | Holding the stick on the Golden Knights (Brayden McNabb): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% CGY |
| P2 16:23 | Hooking on the Flames (Martin Pospisil): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P2 10:56 | Tripping on the Flames (Kevin Bahl): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P2 6:24 | Interference on the Flames (Jonathan Castagna): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P2 3:15 | Slashing on the Flames (Zayne Parekh): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P3 4:10 | High sticking on the Flames (Mikael Backlund): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% VGK |
| P3 1:27 | Tripping on the Golden Knights (Jeremy Lauzon): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% CGY |
When it happened
Golden Knights’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 19:35 | Brett Howden scored on a snap shot from 32 feetShooting · 8% chance | +14% VGK | – |
| 2 | P1 12:02 | Holding the stick on the Golden Knights (Brayden McNabb): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% CGY | – |
| 3 | P1 10:26 | Jack Eichel scored on a wrist shot from 14 feetShooting · 14% chance | +11% VGK | – |
| 4 | P1 8:15 | Morgan Frost’s wrist shot from 9 feet was savedShooting · 14% chanceMorgan Frost missed the net with a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 20% chanceMorgan Frost’s wrist shot from 5 feet was savedShooting · 25% chance | +8% VGK | – |
| 5 | P2 16:23 | Hooking on the Flames (Martin Pospisil): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% VGK | – |
| 6 | P2 9:45 | Jake Middleton scored on a wrist shot from 17 feetShooting · 15% chance | +12% CGY | – |
| 7 | P2 8:57 | Braeden Bowman scored on a snap shot from 27 feetShooting · 13% chance | +13% VGK | – |
| 8 | P3 18:54 | Mark Stone scored on a tip from 5 feetShooting · 10% chance | +5% VGK | – |
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
Flames 28% · Golden Knights 72%
- Final margin
- Golden Knights by 4
- Luck in goals
- 2.7 for the Golden Knights
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Golden Knights by 1.3
- Replay with same day's form
- Flames 40% · Golden Knights 60% 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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