2026-27 regular season · October 20, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Lightning at Golden Knights, Oct 20, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Lightning beat the Golden Knights 6–2, but the replays lean toward the Golden Knights: they take 6 of 10 with the same day's form. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 37 points of win probability to the Lightning.
The biggest swing (P2, 13:16 left): Anthony Cirelli scored on a wrist shot from 7 feet, worth 17 points of win probability to the Lightning.
Final
 Tampa Bay Lightning | 6 |
|---|---|
 Vegas Golden Knights | 2 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +62 Lightning very lucky · −62 Golden Knights
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. Lightning win 4, Golden Knights win 6.
- 1 TBL 5 VGK 2
- 2 TBL 5 VGK 3
- 3 TBL 1 VGK 0
- 4 TBL 2 VGK 1
- 5 TBL 1 VGK 2
- 6 TBL 4 VGK 5
- 7 TBL 2 VGK 4
- 8 TBL 3 VGK 6
- 9 TBL 1 VGK 4
- 10 TBL 0 VGK 5
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Golden Knights by 0.6, 60% to win. The Lightning won by 4, a result we gave 40%. The final margin was 4.6 goals from ours; 3% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Lightning win | 40.3% |
| Golden Knights win | 59.7% |
| Middle 50%: Lightning by 1 to Golden Knights by 3 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Lightning by 4 to Golden Knights by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Lightning by 4 to Golden Knights by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 1 | 22.2% |
| Exactly Lightning by 1 | 18.2% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 3 | 14.9% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 2 | 11.2% |
| Exactly Lightning by 3 | 8.6% |
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, 8:52 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
Lightning win 38% of them, Golden Knights 62%. The line is what actually happened: Lightning by 4.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Lightning by 3+ | 11.6% |
| Lightning by 2 | 7.0% |
| Lightning by 1 | 19.2% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 19.1% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 11.6% |
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 31.5% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Lightning | 38 | 6 | 2.49 | +3.51 |
 Golden Knights | 49 | 2 | 3.71 | −1.71 |
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 16:28 | Holding on the Golden Knights (Dylan Coghlan): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% TBL |
| P1 12:22 | Unsportsmanlike conduct on the Lightning (Conor Geekie): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% VGK |
| P1 2:54 | High sticking on the Golden Knights (Brayden McNabb): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% TBL |
| P2 18:42 | Tripping on the Golden Knights (Mitch Marner): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% TBL |
| P2 18:19 | Interference on the Lightning (Charle-Edouard D'Astous): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% VGK |
| P2 7:29 | Holding on the Lightning (Pontus Holmberg): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% VGK |
| P3 18:36 | Cross checking on the Lightning (Emil Lilleberg): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% VGK |
When it happened
Golden Knights’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 54%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 15:49 | Brandon Hagel scored on a tip from 7 feetShooting · 16% chance | +14% TBL | – |
| 2 | P1 6:44 | Ivan Barbashev scored on a snap shot from 7 feetShooting · 25% chance | +13% VGK | – |
| 3 | P1 5:56 | John Carlson scored on a wrist shot from 11 feetShooting · 9% chance | +16% TBL | – |
| 4 | P1 1:30 | Mark Stone scored on a snap shot from 19 feetShooting · 19% chance | +15% VGK | – |
| 5 | P2 18:19 | Interference on the Lightning (Charle-Edouard D'Astous): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% VGK | – |
| 6 | P2 13:16 | Anthony Cirelli scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 19% chance | +17% TBL | – |
| 7 | P2 9:51 | Anthony Cirelli scored on a snap shot from 26 feetShooting · 13% chance | +14% TBL | – |
| 8 | P2 2:04 | Victor Hedman scored on a wrist shot from 61 feetShooting · 1% chance | +8% TBL | – |
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
Lightning 47% · Golden Knights 53%
- Final margin
- Lightning by 4
- Luck in goals
- 3.9 for the Lightning
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Lightning by 0.1
- Replay with same day's form
- Lightning 38% · Golden Knights 62% 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.
More from week 4, 2026-27
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