2026-27 regular season · October 31, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Blue Jackets at Stars, Oct 31, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Stars beat the Blue Jackets 3–1, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Stars win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 26 points of win probability to the Stars.
The biggest swing (P1, 0:01 left): Thomas Harley scored on a snap shot from 52 feet, worth 14 points of win probability to the Stars.
Final
 Columbus Blue Jackets | 1 |
|---|---|
 Dallas Stars | 3 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +52 Stars lucky · −52 Blue Jackets
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. Blue Jackets win 5, Stars win 5.
- 1 CBJ 4 DAL 1
- 2 CBJ 5 DAL 2
- 3 CBJ 3 DAL 1
- 4 CBJ 3 DAL 2
- 5 CBJ 4 DAL 3
- 6 CBJ 3 DAL 4
- 7 CBJ 2 DAL 3
- 8 CBJ 0 DAL 2
- 9 CBJ 3 DAL 6
- 10 CBJ 1 DAL 4
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Stars by 0.6, 60% to win. The Stars won by 2: the pick was right. The final margin was 1.4 goals from ours; 67% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Blue Jackets win | 40.4% |
| Stars win | 59.6% |
| Middle 50%: Blue Jackets by 1 to Stars by 3 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Blue Jackets by 4 to Stars by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Blue Jackets by 4 to Stars by 5 | 95% |
| Exactly Stars by 1 | 22.2% |
| Exactly Blue Jackets by 1 | 18.2% |
| Exactly Stars by 3 | 14.8% |
| Exactly Stars by 2 | 11.2% |
| Exactly Blue Jackets by 3 | 8.6% |
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, 7:40 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 3,999.8 replays ended
Blue Jackets win 52% of them, Stars 48%. The line is what actually happened: Stars by 2.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Blue Jackets by 3+ | 18.0% |
| Blue Jackets by 2 | 10.8% |
| Blue Jackets by 1 | 23.1% |
| Stars by 1 | 23.8% |
| Stars by 2 | 9.3% |
| Stars by 3+ | 15.1% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Blue Jackets | 37 | 1 | 2.54 | −1.54 |
 Stars | 24 | 2 | 2.23 | −0.23 |
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 18:17 | Delaying game puck over glass on the Blue Jackets (Jet Greaves): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% DAL |
| P2 13:02 | Hooking on the Stars (Nils Lundkvist): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% CBJ |
| P2 7:34 | Too many men on the ice on the Blue Jackets (CBJ): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% DAL |
When it happened
Stars’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 18:17 | Delaying game puck over glass on the Blue Jackets (Jet Greaves): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% DAL | – |
| 2 | P1 17:57 | Wyatt Johnston hit the crossbar with a snap shot from 17 feetShooting · 20% chance | +3% CBJ | – |
| 3 | P1 17:44 | Mikko Rantanen scored on a snap shot from 2 feetShooting · 55% chance | +7% DAL | – |
| 4 | P1 0:01 | Thomas Harley scored on a snap shot from 52 feetShooting · 1% chance | +14% DAL | – |
| 5 | P3 13:39 | Damon Severson scored on a snap shot from 7 feetShooting · 22% chance | +11% CBJ | – |
| 6 | P3 5:51 | Cole Sillinger missed the net with a tip from 7 feetShooting · 8% chance | +3% DAL | – |
| 7 | P3 1:40 | Tyler Seguin missed the net with a snap shot from 79 feetEmpty-net goals · 60% chance | +3% CBJ | – |
| 8 | P3 1:00 | Charlie Coyle missed the net with a tip from 8 feetShooting · 10% chance | +4% DAL | – |
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
Blue Jackets 23% · Stars 77%
- Final margin
- Stars by 2
- Luck in goals
- 0.8 for the Stars
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Stars by 1.2
- Replay with same day's form
- Blue Jackets 52% · Stars 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.
More from week 5, 2026-27
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