luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 18, 2026

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

Hurricanes at Flames, Oct 18, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Flames beat the Hurricanes 3–2, but the replays lean toward the Hurricanes: they take 6 of 10 with the same day's form. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 32 points of win probability to the Flames.

The biggest swing (P3, 4:28 left): Yegor Sharangovich scored on a snap shot from 25 feet, worth 34 points of win probability to the Flames.

Final

Carolina Hurricanes 2
Calgary Flames 3

October 18, 2026 · Scotiabank Saddledome

Our prediction before puck drop: Hurricanes by 1.0

Luck index +60 Flames very lucky · −60 Hurricanes

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. Hurricanes win 6, Flames win 4.

  1. 1 CAR 6 CGY 1
  2. 2 CAR 6 CGY 3
  3. 3 CAR 5 CGY 2
  4. 4 CAR 5 CGY 2
  5. 5 CAR 4 CGY 3
  6. 6 CAR 4 CGY 3
  7. 7 CAR 3 CGY 4
  8. 8 CAR 3 CGY 4
  9. 9 CAR 3 CGY 5
  10. 10 CAR 1 CGY 4

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Hurricanes by 1.0, 66% to win. The Flames won by 1, a result we gave 34%. The final margin was 2.0 goals from ours; 49% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Hurricanes win66.1%
Flames win33.9%
Middle 50%: Hurricanes by 3 to Flames by 150%
Middle 90%: Hurricanes by 5 to Flames by 390%
Middle 95%: Hurricanes by 5 to Flames by 495%
Exactly Hurricanes by 122.0%
Exactly Hurricanes by 316.8%
Exactly Flames by 116.7%
Exactly Hurricanes by 212.8%
Exactly Hurricanes by 49.0%

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 Sun, Oct 18, 7:49 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.

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 4,000.1 replays ended

Hurricanes win 60% of them, Flames 40%. The line is what actually happened: Flames by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Hurricanes by 3+31.6%
Hurricanes by 210.9%
Hurricanes by 117.6%
Flames by 119.7%
Flames by 27.7%
Flames by 3+12.4%

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 +1.2 goals to the Flames: the final margin was Flames by 1, without the luck Hurricanes by 0.3. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Hurricanes6423.89−1.89
Flames4132.58+0.42

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 15:42 Slashing on the Flames (Matt Coronato): 2 minutes on the power play +4% CAR
P1 11:14 Hooking on the Hurricanes (K'Andre Miller): 2 minutes on the power play +4% CGY
P2 18:39 Hooking on the Flames (Mikael Backlund): 2 minutes on the power play +4% CAR
P2 11:15 Holding on the Hurricanes (Felix Unger Sörum): 2 minutes on the power play +4% CGY
P2 1:21 Delaying game puck over glass on the Hurricanes (Mike Reilly): 2 minutes on the power play +6% CGY
P3 16:51 High sticking on the Hurricanes (Jesperi Kotkaniemi): 2 minutes on the power play +6% CGY

When it happened

Flames’ chance of winning

As low as 29% and as high as 100%. 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 Flames were ahead in it, below while the Hurricanes were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P2 13:51 Jesperi Kotkaniemi scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 16% chance +17% CAR –
2 P2 1:30 Matvei Gridin scored on a wrist shot from 35 feetShooting · 5% chance +24% CGY –
3 P2 1:21 Delaying game puck over glass on the Hurricanes (Mike Reilly): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% CGY –
4 P2 0:21 Morgan Frost scored on a tip from 10 feetShooting · 8% chance +23% CGY –
5 P2 0:04 Jalen Chatfield scored on a wrist shot from 52 feetShooting · 1% chance +25% CAR –
6 P3 16:51 High sticking on the Hurricanes (Jesperi Kotkaniemi): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% CGY –
7 P3 4:28 Yegor Sharangovich scored on a snap shot from 25 feetShooting · 12% chance +34% CGY –
8 P3 4:14 K'Andre Miller hit the left post with a wrist shot from 9 feetShooting · 16% chance +6% CGY –

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

Hurricanes 55% · Flames 45%

Final margin
Flames by 1
Luck in goals
1.2 for the Flames
Luck-adjusted margin
Hurricanes by 0.2
Replay with same day's form
Hurricanes 60% · Flames 40% 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.

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