luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 29, 2026

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

Sabres at Ducks, Oct 29, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Sabres beat the Ducks 7–6, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Sabres win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 25 points of win probability to the Sabres.

The biggest swing (P2, 1:24 left): Tage Thompson scored on a wrist shot from 12 feet, worth 21 points of win probability to the Sabres.

Final

Buffalo Sabres 7
Anaheim Ducks 6

October 29, 2026 · Honda Center

Our prediction before puck drop: Ducks by 0.1

Luck index +49 Sabres lucky · −49 Ducks

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. Sabres win 5, Ducks win 5.

  1. 1 BUF 5 ANA 1
  2. 2 BUF 6 ANA 3
  3. 3 BUF 5 ANA 3
  4. 4 BUF 3 ANA 2
  5. 5 BUF 6 ANA 5
  6. 6 BUF 7 ANA 8
  7. 7 BUF 3 ANA 4
  8. 8 BUF 1 ANA 3
  9. 9 BUF 2 ANA 5
  10. 10 BUF 1 ANA 5

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Ducks by 0.1, 52% to win. The Sabres won by 1, a result we gave 48%. The final margin was 1.1 goals from ours; 59% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Sabres win47.6%
Ducks win52.4%
Middle 50%: Sabres by 2 to Ducks by 250%
Middle 90%: Sabres by 4 to Ducks by 490%
Middle 95%: Sabres by 4 to Ducks by 595%
Exactly Ducks by 121.3%
Exactly Sabres by 119.9%
Exactly Ducks by 312.5%
Exactly Sabres by 310.8%
Exactly Ducks by 210.0%

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.

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

Sabres win 51% of them, Ducks 49%. The line is what actually happened: Sabres by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Sabres by 3+23.2%
Sabres by 29.8%
Sabres by 117.9%
Ducks by 119.9%
Ducks by 29.4%
Ducks by 3+19.9%

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 +0.1 goals to the Sabres: the final margin was Sabres by 1, without the luck Sabres by 0.8. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Sabres4373.82+3.18
Ducks4764.39+1.61

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 19:25 Holding on the Sabres (Olen Zellweger): 2 minutes on the power play +4% ANA
P1 18:23 Tripping on the Sabres (Zach Benson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% ANA
P1 8:43 Tripping on the Ducks (Tyson Hinds): 2 minutes on the power play +3% BUF
P1 2:21 High sticking on the Sabres (Tyson Kozak): 2 minutes on the power play +4% ANA
P2 11:41 Tripping on the Ducks (Frank Vatrano): 2 minutes on the power play +5% BUF
P3 18:53 Tripping on the Ducks (Beckett Sennecke): 2 minutes on the power play +3% BUF
P3 13:11 Interference on the Sabres (Dennis Gilbert): 2 minutes on the power play 0% ANA

When it happened

Ducks’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 84%. 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 Ducks were ahead in it, below while the Sabres were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 18:03 Mikael Granlund scored on a snap shot from 11 feetShooting · 27% chance +11% ANA –
2 P1 17:06 Cutter Gauthier scored on a slap shot from 24 feetShooting · 19% chance +10% ANA –
3 P1 9:57 Tyson Kozak scored on a wrist shot from 62 feetShooting · 1% chance +13% BUF –
4 P1 9:22 Roger McQueen scored on a snap shot from 23 feetShooting · 17% chance +11% ANA –
5 P1 8:21 Noah Ostlund scored on a snap shot from 25 feetShooting · 15% chance +11% BUF –
6 P1 4:28 Tage Thompson scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 16% chance +15% BUF –
7 P2 1:24 Tage Thompson scored on a wrist shot from 12 feetShooting · 16% chance +21% BUF –
8 P2 1:09 Tage Thompson scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 19% chance +13% BUF –

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

Sabres 66% · Ducks 34%

Final margin
Sabres by 1
Luck in goals
0.1 for the Sabres
Luck-adjusted margin
Sabres by 0.9
Replay with same day's form
Sabres 51% · Ducks 49% 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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