2026-27 regular season · October 26, 2026 · SO
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Red Wings at Oilers, Oct 26, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Red Wings beat the Oilers 4–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Red Wings win 4 of 10. Luck ran their way: shootout alone was worth 50 points of win probability to the Red Wings.
The game turned on a luck play (SO): the Red Wings won the shootout, worth 50 points of win probability to the Red Wings.
Final (SO)
 Detroit Red Wings | 4 |
|---|---|
 Edmonton Oilers | 3 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +59 Red Wings lucky · −59 Oilers
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. Red Wings win 4, Oilers win 6.
- 1 DET 3 EDM 0
- 2 DET 6 EDM 4
- 3 DET 3 EDM 2
- 4 DET 4 EDM 3
- 5 DET 2 EDM 3
- 6 DET 0 EDM 1
- 7 DET 2 EDM 4
- 8 DET 0 EDM 2
- 9 DET 1 EDM 4
- 10 DET 3 EDM 7
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Oilers by 0.6, 59% to win. The Red Wings won by 1, a result we gave 41%. The final margin was 1.6 goals from ours; 48% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Red Wings win | 40.6% |
| Oilers win | 59.4% |
| Middle 50%: Red Wings by 1 to Oilers by 3 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Red Wings by 4 to Oilers by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Red Wings by 4 to Oilers by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Oilers by 1 | 22.2% |
| Exactly Red Wings by 1 | 18.3% |
| Exactly Oilers by 3 | 14.8% |
| Exactly Oilers by 2 | 11.1% |
| Exactly Red Wings by 3 | 8.7% |
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 Mon, Oct 26, 1:05 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 4,000.3 replays ended
Red Wings win 41% of them, Oilers 59%. The line is what actually happened: Red Wings by 1.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Red Wings by 3+ | 12.3% |
| Red Wings by 2 | 8.2% |
| Red Wings by 1 | 20.4% |
| Oilers by 1 | 22.7% |
| Oilers by 2 | 11.7% |
| Oilers by 3+ | 24.6% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Red Wings | 40 | 3 | 2.48 | +0.52 |
 Oilers | 41 | 3 | 2.70 | +0.30 |
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 7:07 | Interference on the Oilers (Vasily Podkolzin): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% DET |
| P1 2:21 | High sticking on the Oilers (Ryan Shea): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% DET |
| P2 18:45 | Holding on the Red Wings (Justin Faulk): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% EDM |
| P2 12:16 | Holding on the Oilers (Connor Murphy): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% DET |
| P3 19:57 | High sticking on the Red Wings (Viktor Arvidsson): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% EDM |
| P3 17:37 | Tripping on the Red Wings (Michael Brandsegg-Nygård): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% EDM |
| P3 10:35 | Cross checking on the Oilers (Vasily Podkolzin): 2 minutes on the power play | +7% DET |
When it happened
Oilers’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 92%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 13:50 | Vasily Podkolzin scored on a deflected shot from 8 feetShooting · 11% chance | +14% EDM | – |
| 2 | P2 11:25 | Viktor Arvidsson scored on a snap shot from 28 feetShooting · 7% chance | +19% DET | – |
| 3 | P3 15:42 | Isaac Howard scored on a snap shot from 24 feetShooting · 14% chance | +23% EDM | – |
| 4 | P3 15:12 | Emmitt Finnie scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 15% chance | +24% DET | – |
| 5 | P3 10:35 | Cross checking on the Oilers (Vasily Podkolzin): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +7% DET | – |
| 6 | P3 3:28 | Colton Dach scored on a tip from 22 feetShooting · 5% chance | +38% EDM | – |
| 7 | P3 1:17 | Dylan Larkin scored on a wrist shot from 10 feetShooting · 18% chance | +36% DET | – |
| 8 | SO | The game turned hereThe Red Wings won the shootoutShootout · shootouts are close to coin flips | +49% DET | – |
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
Red Wings 46% · Oilers 54%
- Final margin
- Red Wings by 1
- Luck in goals
- 1.1 for the Red Wings
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Oilers by 0.1
- Replay with same day's form
- Red Wings 41% · Oilers 59% 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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