2026-27 regular season · October 29, 2026 · OT
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Mammoth at Penguins, Oct 29, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Mammoth beat the Penguins 4–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Mammoth win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: overtime alone was worth 51 points of win probability to the Mammoth.
The game turned on a luck play (OT): the Mammoth won in overtime, worth 51 points of win probability to the Mammoth.
Final (OT)
 Utah Mammoth | 4 |
|---|---|
 Pittsburgh Penguins | 3 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +44 Mammoth lucky · −44 Penguins
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. Mammoth win 6, Penguins win 4.
- 1 UTA 6 PIT 2
- 2 UTA 4 PIT 1
- 3 UTA 5 PIT 2
- 4 UTA 2 PIT 0
- 5 UTA 3 PIT 2
- 6 UTA 2 PIT 1
- 7 UTA 5 PIT 6
- 8 UTA 1 PIT 2
- 9 UTA 0 PIT 2
- 10 UTA 0 PIT 3
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Penguins by 0.2, 54% to win. The Mammoth 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 |
|---|---|
| Mammoth win | 46.4% |
| Penguins win | 53.6% |
| Middle 50%: Mammoth by 2 to Penguins by 2 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Mammoth by 4 to Penguins by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Mammoth by 4 to Penguins by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Penguins by 1 | 21.5% |
| Exactly Mammoth by 1 | 19.6% |
| Exactly Penguins by 3 | 12.9% |
| Exactly Mammoth by 3 | 10.4% |
| Exactly Penguins by 2 | 10.2% |
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 29, 1:10 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 3,999.9 replays ended
Mammoth win 56% of them, Penguins 44%. The line is what actually happened: Mammoth by 1.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Mammoth by 3+ | 25.0% |
| Mammoth by 2 | 10.6% |
| Mammoth by 1 | 20.8% |
| Penguins by 1 | 19.9% |
| Penguins by 2 | 9.1% |
| Penguins by 3+ | 14.6% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Mammoth | 45 | 3 | 3.17 | −0.17 |
 Penguins | 41 | 3 | 2.62 | +0.38 |
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 19:11 | Hooking on the Mammoth (Clayton Keller): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% PIT |
| P3 10:02 | Tripping on the Penguins (Erik Karlsson): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% UTA |
When it happened
Penguins’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 97%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 15:20 | Logan Cooley scored on a wrist shot from 25 feetShooting · 9% chance | +15% UTA | – |
| 2 | P1 5:49 | Logan Cooley scored on a wrist shot from 15 feetShooting · 17% chance | +13% UTA | – |
| 3 | P2 11:22 | Erik Karlsson scored on a wrist shot from 31 feetShooting · 7% chance | +15% PIT | – |
| 4 | P3 9:01 | Rickard Rakell scored on a wrist shot from 24 feetShooting · 8% chance | +31% PIT | – |
| 5 | P3 0:26 | Evgeni Malkin’s wrist shot from 5 feet was savedShooting · 26% chance | +12% UTA | – |
| 6 | P3 0:25 | Ben Kindel scored on a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 20% chance | +37% PIT | – |
| 7 | P3 0:01 | Logan Cooley scored on a tip from 7 feetShooting · 15% chance | +41% UTA | – |
| 8 | OT | The game turned hereThe Mammoth won in overtimeOvertime · overtime is close to a coin flip | +51% UTA | – |
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
Mammoth 59% · Penguins 41%
- Final margin
- Mammoth by 1
- Luck in goals
- 0.6 for the Mammoth
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Mammoth by 0.4
- Replay with same day's form
- Mammoth 56% · Penguins 44% 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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