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.

Oilers at Islanders, Oct 31, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Oilers beat the Islanders 4–0, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Oilers win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 18 points of win probability to the Oilers.

The biggest swing (P2, 11:18 left): Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored on a snap shot from 20 feet, worth 17 points of win probability to the Oilers.

Final

Edmonton Oilers 4
New York Islanders 0

October 31, 2026 · UBS Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: Oilers by 0.2

Luck index +47 Oilers lucky · −47 Islanders

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. Oilers win 5, Islanders win 5.

  1. 1 EDM 7 NYI 3
  2. 2 EDM 5 NYI 2
  3. 3 EDM 4 NYI 2
  4. 4 EDM 1 NYI 0
  5. 5 EDM 4 NYI 3
  6. 6 EDM 6 NYI 7
  7. 7 EDM 1 NYI 2
  8. 8 EDM 0 NYI 2
  9. 9 EDM 0 NYI 3
  10. 10 EDM 1 NYI 5

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Oilers by 0.2, 53% to win. The Oilers won by 4: the pick was right. The final margin was 3.8 goals from ours; 10% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Oilers win53.4%
Islanders win46.6%
Middle 50%: Oilers by 2 to Islanders by 250%
Middle 90%: Oilers by 4 to Islanders by 490%
Middle 95%: Oilers by 5 to Islanders by 495%
Exactly Oilers by 120.9%
Exactly Islanders by 120.2%
Exactly Oilers by 312.6%
Exactly Oilers by 210.8%
Exactly Islanders by 310.6%

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, 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 3,999.8 replays ended

Oilers win 53% of them, Islanders 47%. The line is what actually happened: Oilers by 4.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Oilers by 3+19.7%
Oilers by 210.4%
Oilers by 123.0%
Islanders by 122.9%
Islanders by 210.2%
Islanders by 3+13.7%

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 +2.7 goals to the Oilers: the final margin was Oilers by 4, without the luck Oilers by 1.3. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Oilers3532.23+0.77
Islanders3002.05−2.05

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 17:38 Kneeing on the Islanders (Emil Heineman): 5 minutes on the power play +9% EDM
P1 15:15 Tripping on the Oilers (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P1 11:58 Tripping on the Islanders (Victor Eklund): 2 minutes on the power play +4% EDM
P1 3:48 Roughing on the Oilers (Trent Frederic): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P2 8:27 Holding on the Oilers (Trent Frederic): 2 minutes on the power play +3% NYI
P2 2:25 Holding on the Islanders (Matthew Schaefer): 2 minutes on the power play +3% EDM
P2 0:31 Slashing on the Islanders (Matthew Schaefer): 2 minutes on the power play +1% EDM
P3 13:36 Interference on the Islanders (Anthony Duclair): 2 minutes on the power play +1% EDM
P3 10:10 Interference on the Oilers (Colton Dach): 2 minutes on the power play +1% NYI
P3 2:00 Holding on the Oilers (Shakir Mukhamadullin): 2 minutes on the power play 0% NYI

When it happened

Islanders’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 54%. 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 Islanders were ahead in it, below while the Oilers were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 17:38 Kneeing on the Islanders (Emil Heineman): 5 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +9% EDM –
2 P1 15:15 Tripping on the Oilers (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% NYI –
3 P1 11:58 Tripping on the Islanders (Victor Eklund): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% EDM –
4 P1 3:48 Roughing on the Oilers (Trent Frederic): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +4% NYI –
5 P2 18:48 Bo Horvat’s slap shot from 22 feet was savedShooting · 21% chance +4% EDM –
6 P2 11:18 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored on a snap shot from 20 feetShooting · 20% chance +17% EDM –
7 P2 10:10 Vasily Podkolzin scored on a wrist shot from 7 feetShooting · 15% chance +14% EDM –
8 P2 1:34 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored on a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 26% chance +6% EDM –

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

Oilers 78% · Islanders 22%

Final margin
Oilers by 4
Luck in goals
2.7 for the Oilers
Luck-adjusted margin
Oilers by 1.3
Replay with same day's form
Oilers 53% · Islanders 47% 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.

All week 5 2026-27 games · Oilers · Islanders

More from week 5, 2026-27

Every game of week 5, 2026-27