2026-27 regular season · October 17, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Penguins at Golden Knights, Oct 17, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Golden Knights beat the Penguins 6–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Golden Knights win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 26 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.
The biggest swing (P1, 18:54 left): Rasmus Andersson scored on a snap shot from 20 feet, worth 13 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.
Final
 Pittsburgh Penguins | 2 |
|---|---|
 Vegas Golden Knights | 6 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +54 Golden Knights lucky · −54 Penguins
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. Penguins win 5, Golden Knights win 5.
- 1 PIT 4 VGK 0
- 2 PIT 3 VGK 0
- 3 PIT 3 VGK 1
- 4 PIT 2 VGK 1
- 5 PIT 3 VGK 2
- 6 PIT 3 VGK 4
- 7 PIT 1 VGK 2
- 8 PIT 1 VGK 2
- 9 PIT 2 VGK 4
- 10 PIT 2 VGK 5
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Golden Knights by 0.4, 57% to win. The Golden Knights won by 4: the pick was right. The final margin was 3.6 goals from ours; 10% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Penguins win | 42.7% |
| Golden Knights win | 57.3% |
| Middle 50%: Penguins by 1 to Golden Knights by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Penguins by 4 to Golden Knights by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Penguins by 4 to Golden Knights by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 1 | 22.0% |
| Exactly Penguins by 1 | 18.8% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 3 | 14.1% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 2 | 10.8% |
| Exactly Penguins by 3 | 9.3% |
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 4,000.1 replays ended
Penguins win 54% of them, Golden Knights 46%. The line is what actually happened: Golden Knights by 4.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Penguins by 3+ | 20.9% |
| Penguins by 2 | 11.5% |
| Penguins by 1 | 22.0% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 22.4% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 9.5% |
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 13.7% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Penguins | 40 | 2 | 2.78 | −0.78 |
 Golden Knights | 31 | 5 | 2.10 | +2.90 |
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 4:03 | Tripping on the Penguins (Sidney Crosby): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P2 14:27 | Interference on the Golden Knights (Noah Hanifin): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% PIT |
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 18:54 | Rasmus Andersson scored on a snap shot from 20 feetShooting · 15% chance | +13% VGK | – |
| 2 | P1 15:58 | Noah Hanifin scored on a snap shot from 22 feetShooting · 14% chance | +11% VGK | – |
| 3 | P1 7:40 | Elmer Soderblom’s deflected shot from 5 feet was savedShooting · 16% chance | +2% VGK | – |
| 4 | P1 4:03 | Tripping on the Penguins (Sidney Crosby): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% VGK | – |
| 5 | P1 2:14 | Mark Stone scored on a snap shot from 4 feetShooting · 29% chance | +6% VGK | – |
| 6 | P2 14:06 | Sidney Crosby scored on a tip from 7 feetShooting · 12% chance | +7% PIT | – |
| 7 | P2 12:55 | Trevor Connelly scored on a snap shot from 28 feetShooting · 8% chance | +7% VGK | – |
| 8 | P2 8:43 | Shea Theodore scored on a slap shot from 31 feetShooting · 10% chance | +2% 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
Penguins 29% · Golden Knights 71%
- Final margin
- Golden Knights by 4
- Luck in goals
- 3.0 for the Golden Knights
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Golden Knights by 1.0
- Replay with same day's form
- Penguins 54% · Golden Knights 46% 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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