2026-27 regular season · October 22, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Golden Knights at Blues, Oct 22, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Blues beat the Golden Knights 6–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Blues win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 26 points of win probability to the Blues.
The biggest swing (P1, 10:00 left): Pavel Buchnevich scored on a wrist shot from 11 feet, worth 15 points of win probability to the Blues.
Final
 Vegas Golden Knights | 2 |
|---|---|
 St. Louis Blues | 6 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +48 Blues lucky · −48 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. Golden Knights win 5, Blues win 5.
- 1 VGK 4 STL 0
- 2 VGK 5 STL 2
- 3 VGK 4 STL 2
- 4 VGK 4 STL 3
- 5 VGK 5 STL 4
- 6 VGK 3 STL 4
- 7 VGK 2 STL 3
- 8 VGK 2 STL 4
- 9 VGK 1 STL 4
- 10 VGK 0 STL 4
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Golden Knights by 0.4, 57% to win. The Blues won by 4, a result we gave 43%. The final margin was 4.4 goals from ours; 5% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Golden Knights win | 56.6% |
| Blues win | 43.4% |
| Middle 50%: Golden Knights by 2 to Blues by 1 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Golden Knights by 4 to Blues by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Golden Knights by 5 to Blues by 4 | 95% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 1 | 21.4% |
| Exactly Blues by 1 | 19.4% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 3 | 13.6% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 2 | 11.4% |
| Exactly Blues by 3 | 9.7% |
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 Thu, Oct 22, 11:45 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 4,000 replays ended
Golden Knights win 48% of them, Blues 52%. The line is what actually happened: Blues by 4.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 16.9% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 9.2% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 21.6% |
| Blues by 1 | 20.4% |
| Blues by 2 | 10.5% |
| Blues by 3+ | 21.4% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Golden Knights | 48 | 2 | 2.82 | −0.82 |
 Blues | 39 | 6 | 2.70 | +3.30 |
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 11:31 | Hooking on the Golden Knights (Noah Hanifin): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% STL |
| P3 4:33 | Roughing on the Golden Knights (Jeremy Lauzon): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% STL |
When it happened
Blues’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 15:57 | Jonatan Berggren’s snap shot from 15 feet was savedShooting · 21% chance | +3% VGK | – |
| 2 | P1 11:31 | Hooking on the Golden Knights (Noah Hanifin): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% STL | – |
| 3 | P1 10:00 | Pavel Buchnevich scored on a wrist shot from 11 feetShooting · 12% chance | +15% STL | – |
| 4 | P1 6:11 | Justin Barron scored on a wrist shot from 24 feetShooting · 6% chance | +13% STL | – |
| 5 | P2 14:22 | Brett Howden scored on a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 18% chance | +12% VGK | – |
| 6 | P2 11:30 | Mason McTavish scored on a tip from 18 feetShooting · 6% chance | +14% STL | – |
| 7 | P3 15:52 | Jack Eichel scored on a backhand shot from 7 feetShooting · 8% chance | +13% VGK | – |
| 8 | P3 11:39 | Jimmy Snuggerud scored on a wrist shot from 41 feetShooting · 3% chance | +13% STL | – |
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
Golden Knights 34% · Blues 66%
- Final margin
- Blues by 4
- Luck in goals
- 3.1 for the Blues
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Blues by 0.9
- Replay with same day's form
- Golden Knights 48% · Blues 52% 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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