2026-27 regular season · October 16, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Bruins at Ducks, Oct 16, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Bruins beat the Ducks 4–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Bruins win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 25 points of win probability to the Bruins.
The game turned on a luck play (P3, 16:34 left): David Pastrnak scored on a backhand shot from 16 feet, worth 24 points of win probability to the Bruins.
Final
 Boston Bruins | 4 |
|---|---|
 Anaheim Ducks | 2 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +54 Bruins lucky · −54 Ducks
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. Bruins win 5, Ducks win 5.
- 1 BOS 6 ANA 2
- 2 BOS 6 ANA 3
- 3 BOS 4 ANA 2
- 4 BOS 6 ANA 5
- 5 BOS 4 ANA 3
- 6 BOS 2 ANA 3
- 7 BOS 2 ANA 3
- 8 BOS 2 ANA 4
- 9 BOS 2 ANA 5
- 10 BOS 0 ANA 4
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Ducks by 0.3, 55% to win. The Bruins won by 2, a result we gave 45%. The final margin was 2.3 goals from ours; 39% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Bruins win | 45.0% |
| Ducks win | 55.0% |
| Middle 50%: Bruins by 2 to Ducks by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Bruins by 4 to Ducks by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Bruins by 4 to Ducks by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Ducks by 1 | 21.7% |
| Exactly Bruins by 1 | 19.3% |
| Exactly Ducks by 3 | 13.3% |
| Exactly Ducks by 2 | 10.4% |
| Exactly Bruins by 3 | 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 Fri, Oct 16, 8:46 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
Bruins win 46% of them, Ducks 54%. The line is what actually happened: Bruins by 2.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Bruins by 3+ | 18.5% |
| Bruins by 2 | 8.8% |
| Bruins by 1 | 19.0% |
| Ducks by 1 | 20.0% |
| Ducks by 2 | 10.5% |
| Ducks by 3+ | 23.1% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Bruins | 37 | 4 | 3.43 | +0.57 |
 Ducks | 51 | 2 | 3.66 | −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 18:46 | Tripping on the Bruins (Nikita Zadorov): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% ANA |
| P2 18:26 | Holding on the Ducks (Tyson Hinds): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% BOS |
| P2 10:36 | Tripping on the Bruins (Will Borgen): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% ANA |
| P2 1:00 | Elbowing on the Bruins (Nikita Zadorov): 4 minutes on the power play | +9% ANA |
| P3 17:38 | Interference on the Ducks (Roger McQueen): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% BOS |
| P3 12:26 | Hooking on the Ducks (Nikita Klepov): 2 minutes on the power play | +7% BOS |
| P3 8:41 | Hooking on the Bruins (Morgan Geekie): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% ANA |
| P3 2:17 | Interference on the Ducks (Roger McQueen): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% BOS |
| P3 0:00 | Tripping on the Bruins (JJ Peterka): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% ANA |
When it happened
Ducks’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 86%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 0:38 | Tim Washe scored on a wrist shot from 54 feetShooting · 1% chance | +18% ANA | – |
| 2 | P1 0:17 | Beckett Sennecke scored on a tip from 8 feetShooting · 7% chance | +13% ANA | – |
| 3 | P2 16:45 | Frederic Brunet scored on a snap shot from 60 feetShooting · 2% chance | +14% BOS | – |
| 4 | P2 1:00 | Elbowing on the Bruins (Nikita Zadorov): 4 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +9% ANA | – |
| 5 | P3 16:34 | The game turned hereDavid Pastrnak scored on a backhand shot from 16 feetShooting · 12% chance | +24% BOS | – |
| 6 | P3 12:26 | Hooking on the Ducks (Nikita Klepov): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +7% BOS | – |
| 7 | P3 11:42 | Elias Lindholm scored on a tip from 1 feetShooting · 65% chance | +11% BOS | – |
| 8 | P3 3:40 | Matthew Poitras scored on a backhand shot from 9 feetShooting · 11% chance | +8% BOS | – |
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
Bruins 63% · Ducks 37%
- Final margin
- Bruins by 2
- Luck in goals
- 1.7 for the Bruins
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Bruins by 0.3
- Replay with same day's form
- Bruins 46% · Ducks 54% 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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