luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · November 1, 2026

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

Wild at Capitals, Nov 1, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Wild beat the Capitals 5–1, but the replays lean toward the Capitals: they take 6 of 10 with the same day's form. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 46 points of win probability to the Wild.

The biggest swing (P2, 0:06 left): Justin Sourdif scored on a tip from 9 feet, worth 15 points of win probability to the Capitals.

Final

Minnesota Wild 5
Washington Capitals 1

November 1, 2026 · Capital One Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: Capitals by 0.1

Luck index +60 Wild very lucky · −60 Capitals

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. Wild win 4, Capitals win 6.

  1. 1 MIN 5 WSH 2
  2. 2 MIN 4 WSH 2
  3. 3 MIN 4 WSH 3
  4. 4 MIN 3 WSH 2
  5. 5 MIN 2 WSH 3
  6. 6 MIN 2 WSH 3
  7. 7 MIN 2 WSH 4
  8. 8 MIN 3 WSH 6
  9. 9 MIN 2 WSH 6
  10. 10 MIN 0 WSH 5

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Capitals by 0.1, 51% to win. The Wild won by 4, a result we gave 49%. The final margin was 4.1 goals from ours; 5% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Wild win49.0%
Capitals win51.0%
Middle 50%: Wild by 2 to Capitals by 250%
Middle 90%: Wild by 4 to Capitals by 490%
Middle 95%: Wild by 4 to Capitals by 595%
Exactly Capitals by 121.0%
Exactly Wild by 120.2%
Exactly Capitals by 312.0%
Exactly Wild by 311.2%
Exactly Wild by 210.0%

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 Sun, Nov 1, 11:58 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 3,999.9 replays ended

Wild win 40% of them, Capitals 60%. The line is what actually happened: Wild by 4.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Wild by 3+11.9%
Wild by 28.6%
Wild by 119.2%
Capitals by 120.3%
Capitals by 211.7%
Capitals by 3+28.3%

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.

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 +2.5 goals to the Wild: the final margin was Wild by 4, without the luck Wild by 1.5. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Wild4142.43+1.57
Capitals4614.00−3.00

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
P3 17:42 High sticking on the Capitals (Jack St. Ivany): 2 minutes on the power play +5% MIN
P3 9:17 Interference on the Wild (Bobby Brink): 2 minutes on the power play +5% WSH
P3 8:20 High sticking on the Capitals (Jordan Kyrou): 2 minutes on the power play +6% MIN
P3 3:50 High sticking on the Capitals (Tom Wilson): 2 minutes on the power play +6% MIN
P3 0:58 Cross checking on the Capitals (Tom Wilson): 2 minutes on the power play 0% MIN
P3 0:41 Delaying game puck over glass on the Capitals (Timothy Liljegren): 2 minutes on the power play 0% MIN

When it happened

Capitals’ 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 Capitals were ahead in it, below while the Wild were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 16:18 Quinn Hughes scored on a snap shot from 31 feetShooting · 11% chance +15% MIN –
2 P1 14:33 Michael McCarron scored on a snap shot from 21 feetShooting · 14% chance +13% MIN –
3 P2 0:06 Justin Sourdif scored on a tip from 9 feetShooting · 8% chance +15% WSH –
4 P3 9:44 Dylan Strome missed the net with a snap shot from 30 feetShooting · 12% chanceJakob Chychrun’s snap shot from 19 feet was savedShooting · 21% chance +11% MIN –
5 P3 8:20 High sticking on the Capitals (Jordan Kyrou): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% MIN –
6 P3 5:04 Alex Tuch’s snap shot from 15 feet was savedShooting · 15% chance +6% MIN –
7 P3 3:50 High sticking on the Capitals (Tom Wilson): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +6% MIN –
8 P3 2:23 Maxim Shabanov scored on a snap shot from 35 feetShooting · 10% chance +7% MIN –

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

Wild 79% · Capitals 21%

Final margin
Wild by 4
Luck in goals
2.5 for the Wild
Luck-adjusted margin
Wild by 1.5
Replay with same day's form
Wild 40% · Capitals 60% 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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