2026-27 regular season · October 30, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Devils at Golden Knights, Oct 30, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Devils beat the Golden Knights 5–2, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 6 of 10.
The biggest swing (P2, 16:11 left): Jack Hughes scored on a wrist shot from 13 feet, worth 17 points of win probability to the Devils.
Final
 New Jersey Devils | 5 |
|---|---|
 Vegas Golden Knights | 2 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +38 Devils lucky · −38 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. Devils win 6, Golden Knights win 4.
- 1 NJD 6 VGK 2
- 2 NJD 3 VGK 0
- 3 NJD 2 VGK 0
- 4 NJD 4 VGK 2
- 5 NJD 1 VGK 0
- 6 NJD 3 VGK 2
- 7 NJD 3 VGK 4
- 8 NJD 2 VGK 3
- 9 NJD 0 VGK 2
- 10 NJD 1 VGK 4
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Golden Knights by 0.5, 59% to win. The Devils won by 3, a result we gave 41%. The final margin was 3.5 goals from ours; 9% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Devils win | 41.4% |
| Golden Knights win | 58.6% |
| Middle 50%: Devils by 1 to Golden Knights by 3 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Devils by 4 to Golden Knights by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Devils by 4 to Golden Knights by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 1 | 22.1% |
| Exactly Devils by 1 | 18.5% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 3 | 14.5% |
| Exactly Golden Knights by 2 | 11.0% |
| Exactly Devils by 3 | 8.9% |
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 Fri, Oct 30, 12:53 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
Devils win 62% of them, Golden Knights 38%. The line is what actually happened: Devils by 3.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Devils by 3+ | 25.6% |
| Devils by 2 | 12.7% |
| Devils by 1 | 23.9% |
| Golden Knights by 1 | 23.0% |
| Golden Knights by 2 | 7.2% |
| Golden Knights by 3+ | 7.5% |
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.
| Shooting | Unblocked attempts | Goals | Expected goals | Above expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Devils | 44 | 4 | 2.41 | +1.59 |
 Golden Knights | 32 | 2 | 1.69 | +0.31 |
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 12:02 | Broken stick on the Golden Knights (Noah Hanifin): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NJD |
| P1 3:39 | Tripping on the Devils (Luke Evangelista): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% VGK |
| P2 19:23 | Cross checking on the Golden Knights (Mitch Marner): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NJD |
When it happened
Golden Knights’ chance of winning
As low as 0% and as high as 71%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 14:22 | Luke Hughes scored on a snap shot from 41 feetShooting · 4% chance | +16% NJD | – |
| 2 | P1 3:39 | Tripping on the Devils (Luke Evangelista): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% VGK | – |
| 3 | P1 3:33 | Mark Stone scored on a tip from 9 feetShooting · 12% chance | +16% VGK | – |
| 4 | P1 2:03 | Ivan Barbashev scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 15% chance | +15% VGK | – |
| 5 | P1 1:09 | Arseny Gritsyuk scored on a wrist shot from 19 feetShooting · 11% chance | +16% NJD | – |
| 6 | P2 19:23 | Cross checking on the Golden Knights (Mitch Marner): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% NJD | – |
| 7 | P2 16:11 | Jack Hughes scored on a wrist shot from 13 feetShooting · 13% chance | +17% NJD | – |
| 8 | P2 1:44 | Arseny Gritsyuk scored on a backhand shot from 10 feetShooting · 11% chance | +15% NJD | – |
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
Devils 84% · Golden Knights 16%
- Final margin
- Devils by 3
- Luck in goals
- 1.6 for the Devils
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Devils by 1.4
- Replay with same day's form
- Devils 62% · Golden Knights 38% 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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