luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 25, 2026

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

Islanders at Stars, Oct 25, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Stars beat the Islanders 6–3, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 7 of 10. The Islanders had the bounces: goaltending alone was worth 19 points of win probability to the Islanders.

The biggest swing (P3, 15:50 left): Wyatt Johnston scored on a wrist shot from 26 feet, worth 25 points of win probability to the Stars.

Final

New York Islanders 3
Dallas Stars 6

October 25, 2026 · American Airlines Center

Our prediction before puck drop: Stars by 0.6

Luck index +26 Stars lucky · −26 Islanders

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. Islanders win 3, Stars win 7.

  1. 1 NYI 4 DAL 1
  2. 2 NYI 4 DAL 3
  3. 3 NYI 5 DAL 4
  4. 4 NYI 5 DAL 6
  5. 5 NYI 0 DAL 1
  6. 6 NYI 3 DAL 5
  7. 7 NYI 0 DAL 3
  8. 8 NYI 3 DAL 6
  9. 9 NYI 1 DAL 5
  10. 10 NYI 1 DAL 7

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Stars by 0.6, 61% to win. The Stars won by 3: the pick was right. The final margin was 2.4 goals from ours; 33% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Islanders win39.1%
Stars win60.9%
Middle 50%: Islanders by 1 to Stars by 350%
Middle 90%: Islanders by 3 to Stars by 490%
Middle 95%: Islanders by 4 to Stars by 595%
Exactly Stars by 122.3%
Exactly Islanders by 117.8%
Exactly Stars by 315.3%
Exactly Stars by 211.4%
Exactly Islanders by 38.3%

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 Sun, Oct 25, 12:45 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

Islanders win 26% of them, Stars 74%. The line is what actually happened: Stars by 3.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Islanders by 3+4.8%
Islanders by 25.4%
Islanders by 115.9%
Stars by 117.9%
Stars by 211.5%
Stars by 3+44.5%

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.

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 +0.8 goals to the Stars: the final margin was Stars by 3, without the luck Stars by 2.2. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Islanders3031.80+1.20
Stars5063.71+2.29

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 11:56 Tripping on the Stars (Lian Bichsel): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P2 10:53 Cross checking on the Islanders (Logan Stanley): 2 minutes on the power play +5% DAL
P2 5:55 Hooking on the Islanders (Adam Pelech): 2 minutes on the power play +4% DAL
P2 5:28 Holding on the Stars (Miro Heiskanen): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P2 1:30 Holding on the Stars (Nils Lundkvist): 2 minutes on the power play +6% NYI

When it happened

Stars’ chance of winning

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 Stars were ahead in it, below while the Islanders were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 8:29 Tyler Seguin scored on a snap shot from 18 feetShooting · 10% chance +15% DAL –
2 P1 6:17 Matthew Schaefer scored on a snap shot from 20 feetShooting · 10% chance +16% NYI –
3 P1 5:28 Jason Robertson scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 20% chance +14% DAL –
4 P2 15:59 Kyle Palmieri scored on a backhand shot from 10 feetShooting · 4% chance +19% NYI –
5 P2 9:08 Justin Hryckowian scored on a backhand shot from 8 feetShooting · 15% chance +18% DAL –
6 P2 2:15 Brayden Schenn scored on a snap shot from 16 feetShooting · 17% chance +20% NYI –
7 P3 15:50 Wyatt Johnston scored on a wrist shot from 26 feetShooting · 10% chance +25% DAL –
8 P3 10:15 Jason Robertson scored on a snap shot from 21 feetShooting · 19% chance +11% DAL –

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

Islanders 10% · Stars 90%

Final margin
Stars by 3
Luck in goals
0.8 for the Stars
Luck-adjusted margin
Stars by 2.2
Replay with same day's form
Islanders 26% · Stars 74% 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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