luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 15, 2026 · OT

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

Sabres at Maple Leafs, Oct 15, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Sabres beat the Maple Leafs 5–4, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Sabres win 4 of 10. Luck ran their way: overtime alone was worth 51 points of win probability to the Sabres.

The game turned on a luck play (OT): the Sabres won in overtime, worth 51 points of win probability to the Sabres.

Final (OT)

Buffalo Sabres 5
Toronto Maple Leafs 4

October 15, 2026 · Scotiabank Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: Sabres by 0.1

Luck index +57 Sabres lucky · −57 Maple Leafs

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. Sabres win 4, Maple Leafs win 6.

  1. 1 BUF 3 TOR 0
  2. 2 BUF 4 TOR 2
  3. 3 BUF 4 TOR 3
  4. 4 BUF 4 TOR 3
  5. 5 BUF 2 TOR 3
  6. 6 BUF 2 TOR 3
  7. 7 BUF 2 TOR 4
  8. 8 BUF 1 TOR 4
  9. 9 BUF 1 TOR 4
  10. 10 BUF 1 TOR 6

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Sabres by 0.1, 52% to win. The Sabres won by 1: the pick was right. The final margin was 0.9 goals from ours; 79% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Sabres win51.8%
Maple Leafs win48.2%
Middle 50%: Sabres by 2 to Maple Leafs by 250%
Middle 90%: Sabres by 4 to Maple Leafs by 490%
Middle 95%: Sabres by 5 to Maple Leafs by 495%
Exactly Sabres by 120.7%
Exactly Maple Leafs by 120.5%
Exactly Sabres by 312.1%
Exactly Maple Leafs by 311.1%
Exactly Sabres by 210.5%

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, 11:30 am 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

Sabres win 43% of them, Maple Leafs 57%. The line is what actually happened: Sabres by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Sabres by 3+13.7%
Sabres by 27.7%
Sabres by 121.7%
Maple Leafs by 122.2%
Maple Leafs by 210.2%
Maple Leafs by 3+24.5%

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 Sabres: the final margin was Sabres by 1, without the luck Maple Leafs by 0.4. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Sabres4642.49+1.51
Maple Leafs4143.03+0.97

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 7:28 Hooking on the Sabres (Sam Carrick): 2 minutes on the power play +4% TOR
P1 1:48 Roughing on the Sabres (Dennis Gilbert): 2 minutes on the power play +4% TOR
P2 5:25 Holding on the Maple Leafs (Oliver Ekman-Larsson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% BUF
P2 1:53 Hooking on the Maple Leafs (Morgan Rielly): 2 minutes on the power play +2% BUF
P2 1:27 Interference on the Sabres (Zach Benson): 2 minutes on the power play +2% TOR

When it happened

Maple Leafs’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 96%. 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 Maple Leafs were ahead in it, below while the Sabres were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 17:36 Auston Matthews scored on a wrist shot from 10 feetShooting · 13% chance +14% TOR –
2 P1 16:25 Jack Quinn scored on a wrist shot from 13 feetShooting · 12% chance +14% BUF –
3 P2 17:19 Jack Quinn scored on a wrist shot from 27 feetShooting · 8% chance +18% BUF –
4 P2 8:47 Kirill Marchenko scored on a wrist shot from 35 feetShooting · 6% chance +20% TOR –
5 P2 3:09 Kirill Marchenko scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 15% chance +13% TOR –
6 P3 9:55 Dennis Gilbert scored on a snap shot from 52 feetShooting · 3% chance +13% BUF –
7 P3 7:44 Mattias Samuelsson scored on a wrist shot from 32 feetShooting · 8% chance +32% BUF –
8 OT The game turned hereThe Sabres won in overtimeOvertime · overtime is close to a coin flip +51% 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

Sabres 41% · Maple Leafs 59%

Final margin
Sabres by 1
Luck in goals
1.4 for the Sabres
Luck-adjusted margin
Maple Leafs by 0.4
Replay with same day's form
Sabres 43% · Maple Leafs 57% 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.

All week 3 2026-27 games · Sabres · Maple Leafs

More from week 3, 2026-27

Every game of week 3, 2026-27