2026-27 regular season · November 3, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Avalanche at Blue Jackets, Nov 3, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Blue Jackets beat the Avalanche 7–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Blue Jackets win 6 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 28 points of win probability to the Blue Jackets.
The biggest swing (P2, 15:41 left): Jake Christiansen scored on a slap shot from 54 feet, worth 14 points of win probability to the Blue Jackets.
Final
 Colorado Avalanche | 2 |
|---|---|
 Columbus Blue Jackets | 7 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +44 Blue Jackets lucky · −44 Avalanche
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. Avalanche win 4, Blue Jackets win 6.
- 1 COL 6 CBJ 3
- 2 COL 8 CBJ 5
- 3 COL 3 CBJ 2
- 4 COL 6 CBJ 5
- 5 COL 3 CBJ 4
- 6 COL 1 CBJ 2
- 7 COL 1 CBJ 3
- 8 COL 4 CBJ 7
- 9 COL 2 CBJ 5
- 10 COL 1 CBJ 6
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Avalanche by 0.4, 57% to win. The Blue Jackets won by 5, a result we gave 43%. The final margin was 5.4 goals from ours; 2% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Avalanche win | 56.6% |
| Blue Jackets win | 43.4% |
| Middle 50%: Avalanche by 2 to Blue Jackets by 1 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Avalanche by 4 to Blue Jackets by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Avalanche by 5 to Blue Jackets by 4 | 95% |
| Exactly Avalanche by 1 | 21.4% |
| Exactly Blue Jackets by 1 | 19.4% |
| Exactly Avalanche by 3 | 13.6% |
| Exactly Avalanche by 2 | 11.4% |
| Exactly Blue Jackets by 3 | 9.6% |
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 Tue, Nov 3, 1:10 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 4,000.2 replays ended
Avalanche win 44% of them, Blue Jackets 56%. The line is what actually happened: Blue Jackets by 5.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Avalanche by 3+ | 16.8% |
| Avalanche by 2 | 8.5% |
| Avalanche by 1 | 18.9% |
| Blue Jackets by 1 | 19.1% |
| Blue Jackets by 2 | 9.9% |
| Blue Jackets by 3+ | 26.8% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Avalanche | 47 | 2 | 3.24 | −1.24 |
 Blue Jackets | 36 | 7 | 3.13 | +3.87 |
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 13:50 | Too many men on the ice on the Avalanche (COL): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% CBJ |
| P1 0:03 | High sticking on the Blue Jackets (Matthew Knies): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% COL |
| P2 9:57 | Tripping on the Avalanche (Nicolas Roy): 2 minutes on the power play | +1% CBJ |
| P2 4:16 | Hooking on the Blue Jackets (Cole Sillinger): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% COL |
| P2 3:42 | Tripping on the Blue Jackets (Charlie Coyle): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% COL |
| P3 14:08 | Tripping on the Avalanche (Martin Necas): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% CBJ |
| P3 4:07 | Tripping on the Avalanche (Logan O'Connor): 2 minutes on the power play | 0% CBJ |
When it happened
Blue Jackets’ chance of winning
Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 19:32 | Mathieu Olivier scored on a snap shot from 5 feetShooting · 33% chance | +10% CBJ | – |
| 2 | P1 13:50 | Too many men on the ice on the Avalanche (COL): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +3% CBJ | – |
| 3 | P1 12:23 | Ivan Provorov scored on a slap shot from 57 feetShooting · 3% chance | +13% CBJ | – |
| 4 | P1 9:03 | Cale Makar scored on a snap shot from 17 feetShooting · 12% chance | +12% COL | – |
| 5 | P1 0:03 | High sticking on the Blue Jackets (Matthew Knies): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls | +4% COL | – |
| 6 | P2 15:41 | Jake Christiansen scored on a slap shot from 54 feetShooting · 2% chance | +14% CBJ | – |
| 7 | P2 14:17 | Nicolas Roy missed the net with a snap shot from 7 feetShooting · 19% chance | +3% CBJ | – |
| 8 | P2 12:40 | Cole Sillinger scored on a backhand shot from 7 feetShooting · 8% chance | +7% CBJ | – |
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
Avalanche 21% · Blue Jackets 79%
- Final margin
- Blue Jackets by 5
- Luck in goals
- 3.8 for the Blue Jackets
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Blue Jackets by 1.2
- Replay with same day's form
- Avalanche 44% · Blue Jackets 56% 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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