2026-27 regular season · October 17, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Bruins at Kings, Oct 17, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Bruins beat the Kings 4–1, 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 22 points of win probability to the Bruins.
The biggest swing (P3, 6:24 left): Marat Khusnutdinov scored on a backhand shot from 5 feet, worth 31 points of win probability to the Bruins.
Final
 Boston Bruins | 4 |
|---|---|
 Los Angeles Kings | 1 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +54 Bruins lucky · −54 Kings
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, Kings win 5.
- 1 BOS 4 LAK 1
- 2 BOS 5 LAK 3
- 3 BOS 3 LAK 2
- 4 BOS 2 LAK 1
- 5 BOS 2 LAK 1
- 6 BOS 4 LAK 5
- 7 BOS 2 LAK 3
- 8 BOS 2 LAK 4
- 9 BOS 3 LAK 6
- 10 BOS 0 LAK 4
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Kings by 0.3, 56% to win. The Bruins won by 3, a result we gave 44%. The final margin was 3.3 goals from ours; 16% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Bruins win | 44.2% |
| Kings win | 55.8% |
| Middle 50%: Bruins by 2 to Kings by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Bruins by 4 to Kings by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Bruins by 4 to Kings by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Kings by 1 | 21.8% |
| Exactly Bruins by 1 | 19.2% |
| Exactly Kings by 3 | 13.6% |
| Exactly Kings by 2 | 10.6% |
| Exactly Bruins by 3 | 9.8% |
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 Sat, Oct 17, 8:17 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
Bruins win 46% of them, Kings 54%. The line is what actually happened: Bruins by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Bruins by 3+ | 15.0% |
| Bruins by 2 | 9.2% |
| Bruins by 1 | 21.9% |
| Kings by 1 | 22.8% |
| Kings by 2 | 11.1% |
| Kings by 3+ | 20.1% |
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 | 36 | 2 | 2.10 | −0.10 |
 Kings | 41 | 1 | 2.53 | −1.53 |
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 0:19 | Cross checking on the Kings (Brandt Clarke): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% BOS |
| P2 13:31 | Interference on the Kings (Brandt Clarke): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% BOS |
| P2 9:02 | Interference on the Bruins (Frederic Brunet): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% LAK |
| P3 12:49 | Hooking on the Bruins (Hampus Lindholm): 2 minutes on the power play | +7% LAK |
When it happened
Kings’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 72%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 19:29 | Alex Laferriere scored on a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 17% chance | +13% LAK | – |
| 2 | P2 17:17 | David Pastrnak scored on a snap shot from 36 feetShooting · 7% chance | +18% BOS | – |
| 3 | P2 14:45 | Fraser Minten’s wrist shot from 6 feet was savedShooting · 20% chance | +4% LAK | – |
| 4 | P2 13:31 | Interference on the Kings (Brandt Clarke): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +5% BOS | – |
| 5 | P2 10:06 | Samuel Helenius’s snap shot from 8 feet was savedShooting · 22% chance | +5% BOS | – |
| 6 | P2 9:02 | Interference on the Bruins (Frederic Brunet): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +5% LAK | – |
| 7 | P3 12:49 | Hooking on the Bruins (Hampus Lindholm): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +7% LAK | – |
| 8 | P3 6:24 | Marat Khusnutdinov scored on a backhand shot from 5 feetShooting · 16% chance | +31% 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 69% · Kings 31%
- Final margin
- Bruins by 3
- Luck in goals
- 2.1 for the Bruins
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Bruins by 0.9
- Replay with same day's form
- Bruins 46% · Kings 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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