luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · October 31, 2026

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

Blues at Red Wings, Oct 31, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Blues beat the Red Wings 5–4, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Blues win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 52 points of win probability to the Blues.

The game turned on a luck play (P3, 7:03 left): Justin Barron scored on a snap shot from 37 feet, worth 32 points of win probability to the Blues. The biggest single swing (P3, 6:45 left): Aleksanteri Kaskimaki scored on a tip from 8 feet.

Final

St. Louis Blues 5
Detroit Red Wings 4

October 31, 2026 · Little Caesars Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: Red Wings by 0.2

Luck index +45 Blues lucky · −45 Red Wings

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. Blues win 5, Red Wings win 5.

  1. 1 STL 4 DET 0
  2. 2 STL 4 DET 1
  3. 3 STL 4 DET 2
  4. 4 STL 3 DET 2
  5. 5 STL 2 DET 1
  6. 6 STL 3 DET 4
  7. 7 STL 2 DET 3
  8. 8 STL 1 DET 2
  9. 9 STL 0 DET 2
  10. 10 STL 2 DET 5

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Red Wings by 0.2, 53% to win. The Blues won by 1, a result we gave 47%. 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
OutcomeChance
Blues win47.1%
Red Wings win52.9%
Middle 50%: Blues by 2 to Red Wings by 250%
Middle 90%: Blues by 4 to Red Wings by 490%
Middle 95%: Blues by 4 to Red Wings by 595%
Exactly Red Wings by 121.4%
Exactly Blues by 119.8%
Exactly Red Wings by 312.6%
Exactly Blues by 310.6%
Exactly Red Wings by 210.1%

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.

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 replays ended

Blues win 55% of them, Red Wings 45%. The line is what actually happened: Blues by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Blues by 3+20.2%
Blues by 211.7%
Blues by 122.7%
Red Wings by 123.1%
Red Wings by 29.6%
Red Wings by 3+12.6%

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.

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 +0.4 goals to the Red Wings: the final margin was Blues by 1, without the luck Blues by 1.4. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Blues2852.46+2.54
Red Wings3942.05+1.95

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
P2 16:05 Tripping on the Blues (Adam Jiricek): 2 minutes on the power play +4% DET
P2 14:08 Hooking on the Red Wings (Michael Brandsegg-Nygård): 2 minutes on the power play +4% STL
P2 9:41 Tripping on the Red Wings (Viktor Arvidsson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% STL
P3 17:16 Tripping on the Blues (Jake Neighbours): 2 minutes on the power play +5% DET
P3 5:33 Holding on the Red Wings (Emmitt Finnie): 2 minutes on the power play +6% STL

When it happened

Red Wings’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 95%. 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 Red Wings were ahead in it, below while the Blues were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 17:31 Dalibor Dvorsky scored on a backhand shot from 7 feetShooting · 12% chance +14% STL –
2 P1 11:47 J.T. Compher scored on a snap shot from 18 feetShooting · 10% chance +15% DET –
3 P2 19:19 Keegan Kolesar scored on a tip from 4 feetShooting · 14% chance +16% DET –
4 P2 6:46 Lucas Raymond scored on a wrist shot from 41 feetShooting · 4% chance +14% DET –
5 P2 0:28 Jimmy Snuggerud scored on a tip from 7 feetShooting · 8% chance +14% STL –
6 P3 16:31 Emmitt Finnie scored on a wrist shot from 27 feetShooting · 12% chance +13% DET –
7 P3 7:03 The game turned hereJustin Barron scored on a snap shot from 37 feetShooting · 7% chance +32% STL –
8 P3 6:45 Aleksanteri Kaskimaki scored on a tip from 8 feetShooting · 9% chance +33% STL –

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

Blues 79% · Red Wings 21%

Final margin
Blues by 1
Luck in goals
0.4 for the Red Wings
Luck-adjusted margin
Blues by 1.4
Replay with same day's form
Blues 55% · Red Wings 45% 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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