2026-27 regular season · October 31, 2026 · OT
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Blackhawks at Bruins, Oct 31, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Bruins beat the Blackhawks 5–4, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Bruins win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: overtime alone was worth 49 points of win probability to the Bruins.
The biggest swing (OT): the Bruins won in overtime, worth 49 points of win probability to the Bruins.
Final (OT)
 Chicago Blackhawks | 4 |
|---|---|
 Boston Bruins | 5 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +52 Bruins lucky · −52 Blackhawks
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. Blackhawks win 5, Bruins win 5.
- 1 CHI 6 BOS 2
- 2 CHI 6 BOS 3
- 3 CHI 3 BOS 1
- 4 CHI 4 BOS 3
- 5 CHI 4 BOS 3
- 6 CHI 4 BOS 5
- 7 CHI 3 BOS 4
- 8 CHI 4 BOS 6
- 9 CHI 1 BOS 4
- 10 CHI 1 BOS 5
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Bruins by 1.0, 66% to win. The Bruins won by 1: the pick was right. The final margin was 0.0 goals from ours; 77% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Blackhawks win | 33.7% |
| Bruins win | 66.3% |
| Middle 50%: Blackhawks by 1 to Bruins by 3 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Blackhawks by 3 to Bruins by 5 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Blackhawks by 4 to Bruins by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Bruins by 1 | 22.5% |
| Exactly Bruins by 3 | 17.1% |
| Exactly Blackhawks by 1 | 16.2% |
| Exactly Bruins by 2 | 12.1% |
| Exactly Bruins by 4 | 8.8% |
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 Sat, Oct 31, 11:57 am 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
Blackhawks win 52% of them, Bruins 48%. The line is what actually happened: Bruins by 1.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Blackhawks by 3+ | 20.5% |
| Blackhawks by 2 | 9.7% |
| Blackhawks by 1 | 21.5% |
| Bruins by 1 | 20.4% |
| Bruins by 2 | 9.5% |
| Bruins by 3+ | 18.3% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Blackhawks | 52 | 4 | 3.03 | +0.97 |
 Bruins | 47 | 4 | 3.57 | +0.43 |
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 16:51 | Tripping on the Blackhawks (Cole Smith): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% BOS |
| P1 14:07 | Delaying game puck over glass on the Bruins (Will Borgen): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% CHI |
| P1 6:38 | Roughing on the Bruins (Morgan Geekie): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% CHI |
| P1 1:33 | Tripping on the Blackhawks (Wyatt Kaiser): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% BOS |
| P2 7:06 | Holding on the Bruins (Fraser Minten): 2 minutes on the power play | +5% CHI |
| P3 15:15 | Holding on the Blackhawks (Alex Vlasic): 2 minutes on the power play | +7% BOS |
When it happened
Bruins’ chance of winning
As low as 3% and as high as 100%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 13:56 | Anton Frondell scored on a snap shot from 28 feetShooting · 11% chance | +15% CHI | – |
| 2 | P1 6:55 | David Pastrnak scored on a snap shot from 14 feetShooting · 20% chance | +14% BOS | – |
| 3 | P2 16:29 | Anton Frondell scored on a deflected shot from 10 feetShooting · 7% chance | +18% CHI | – |
| 4 | P2 7:26 | Casey Mittelstadt scored on a snap shot from 34 feetShooting · 10% chance | +20% BOS | – |
| 5 | P3 10:22 | Ryan Greene scored on a snap shot from 27 feetShooting · 11% chance | +29% CHI | – |
| 6 | P3 7:40 | Connor Bedard scored on a backhand shot from 9 feetShooting · 11% chance | +11% CHI | – |
| 7 | P3 0:12 | Morgan Geekie scored on a slap shot from 28 feetShooting · 12% chance | +43% BOS | – |
| 8 | OT | The Bruins won in overtimeOvertime · overtime is close to a coin flip | +49% BOS | – |
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
Blackhawks 46% · Bruins 54%
- Final margin
- Bruins by 1
- Luck in goals
- 0.9 for the Bruins
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Bruins by 0.1
- Replay with same day's form
- Blackhawks 52% · Bruins 48% 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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