2026-27 regular season · October 20, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Avalanche at Devils, Oct 20, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Devils beat the Avalanche 4–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Devils win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 16 points of win probability to the Devils.
The biggest swing (P2, 7:27 left): Declan Chisholm scored on a wrist shot from 63 feet, worth 22 points of win probability to the Devils.
Final
 Colorado Avalanche | 3 |
|---|---|
 New Jersey Devils | 4 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +42 Devils lucky · −42 Avalanche
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. Avalanche win 4, Devils win 6.
- 1 COL 4 NJD 1
- 2 COL 3 NJD 1
- 3 COL 3 NJD 2
- 4 COL 2 NJD 1
- 5 COL 1 NJD 2
- 6 COL 2 NJD 3
- 7 COL 1 NJD 2
- 8 COL 0 NJD 2
- 9 COL 3 NJD 6
- 10 COL 1 NJD 5
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Avalanche by 0.2, 54% to win. The Devils won by 1, a result we gave 46%. The final margin was 1.2 goals from ours; 59% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Avalanche win | 54.1% |
| Devils win | 45.9% |
| Middle 50%: Avalanche by 2 to Devils by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Avalanche by 4 to Devils by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Avalanche by 5 to Devils by 4 | 95% |
| Exactly Avalanche by 1 | 21.0% |
| Exactly Devils by 1 | 20.0% |
| Exactly Avalanche by 3 | 12.8% |
| Exactly Avalanche by 2 | 11.0% |
| Exactly Devils by 3 | 10.4% |
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 Tue, Oct 20, 11:27 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.
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 3,999.9 replays ended
Avalanche win 42% of them, Devils 58%. The line is what actually happened: Devils by 1.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Avalanche by 3+ | 10.9% |
| Avalanche by 2 | 8.8% |
| Avalanche by 1 | 22.5% |
| Devils by 1 | 23.0% |
| Devils by 2 | 12.4% |
| Devils by 3+ | 22.4% |
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.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Avalanche | 52 | 3 | 2.72 | +0.28 |
 Devils | 48 | 3 | 2.49 | +0.51 |
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 1:38 | Delaying game on the Avalanche (Artturi Lehkonen): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NJD |
| P3 11:17 | Hooking on the Devils (Evan Rodrigues): 2 minutes on the power play | +2% COL |
When it happened
Devils’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 13:20 | Luke Evangelista scored on a wrist shot from 23 feetShooting · 10% chance | +15% NJD | – |
| 2 | P1 5:28 | Gabriel Landeskog scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 16% chance | +15% COL | – |
| 3 | P1 1:38 | Delaying game on the Avalanche (Artturi Lehkonen): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% NJD | – |
| 4 | P1 1:03 | Nico Hischier’s wrist shot from 12 feet was savedShooting · 17% chance | +3% COL | – |
| 5 | P2 7:27 | Declan Chisholm scored on a wrist shot from 63 feetShooting · 1% chance | +22% NJD | – |
| 6 | P3 19:30 | Martin Necas’s backhand shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 15% chance | +4% NJD | – |
| 7 | P3 19:22 | Nathan MacKinnon’s wrist shot from 8 feet was savedShooting · 18% chance | +5% NJD | – |
| 8 | P3 15:21 | Arseny Gritsyuk scored on a backhand shot from 6 feetShooting · 14% chance | +12% NJD | – |
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
Avalanche 43% · Devils 57%
- Final margin
- Devils by 1
- Luck in goals
- 0.6 for the Devils
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Devils by 0.4
- Replay with same day's form
- Avalanche 42% · Devils 58% 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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