luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · November 3, 2026

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

Golden Knights at Penguins, Nov 3, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Golden Knights beat the Penguins 3–2, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Golden Knights win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 28 points of win probability to the Golden Knights.

The game turned on a luck play (P3, 8:41 left): Trevor Connelly scored on a wrist shot from 6 feet, worth 27 points of win probability to the Golden Knights. The biggest single swing (P3, 0:35 left): Tomas Hertl scored on a wrist shot from 5 feet.

Final

Vegas Golden Knights 3
Pittsburgh Penguins 2

November 3, 2026 · PPG Paints Arena

Our prediction before puck drop: even

Luck index +54 Golden Knights lucky · −54 Penguins

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. Golden Knights win 5, Penguins win 5.

  1. 1 VGK 5 PIT 1
  2. 2 VGK 4 PIT 1
  3. 3 VGK 3 PIT 1
  4. 4 VGK 4 PIT 3
  5. 5 VGK 1 PIT 0
  6. 6 VGK 2 PIT 3
  7. 7 VGK 2 PIT 3
  8. 8 VGK 1 PIT 3
  9. 9 VGK 2 PIT 5
  10. 10 VGK 1 PIT 5

Our prediction before puck drop

We had it even, a coin flip. The Golden Knights won by 1. The final margin was 1.0 goal from ours; 80% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Golden Knights win50.1%
Penguins win49.9%
Middle 50%: Golden Knights by 2 to Penguins by 250%
Middle 90%: Golden Knights by 4 to Penguins by 490%
Middle 95%: Golden Knights by 5 to Penguins by 595%
Exactly Penguins by 120.8%
Exactly Golden Knights by 120.4%
Exactly Penguins by 311.7%
Exactly Golden Knights by 311.5%
Exactly Golden Knights by 210.2%

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.

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

Golden Knights win 46% of them, Penguins 54%. The line is what actually happened: Golden Knights by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Golden Knights by 3+17.1%
Golden Knights by 29.1%
Golden Knights by 120.3%
Penguins by 121.0%
Penguins by 29.9%
Penguins by 3+22.6%

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 +1.1 goals to the Golden Knights: the final margin was Golden Knights by 1, without the luck Penguins by 0.1. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Golden Knights3132.57+0.43
Penguins3722.98−0.98

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 14:53 Holding on the Golden Knights (Jeremy Lauzon): 2 minutes on the power play +4% PIT
P1 9:37 Holding on the Golden Knights (Nic Dowd): 2 minutes on the power play +4% PIT
P1 4:33 Interference on the Penguins (Hendrix Lapierre): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P1 0:02 Tripping on the Penguins (Sidney Crosby): 2 minutes on the power play +4% VGK
P2 11:57 Delaying game puck over glass on the Golden Knights (Trevor Connelly): 2 minutes on the power play +4% PIT
P2 7:33 Holding on the Penguins (Erik Karlsson): 2 minutes on the power play +5% VGK
P3 15:39 Interference on the Golden Knights (Jeremy Lauzon): 2 minutes on the power play +6% PIT
P3 4:03 Holding the stick on the Golden Knights (Jeremy Lauzon): 2 minutes on the power play +9% PIT
P3 3:25 High sticking on the Golden Knights (Brayden McNabb): 2 minutes on the power play +9% PIT
P3 1:17 Tripping on the Penguins (Tommy Novak): 2 minutes on the power play +10% VGK

When it happened

Penguins’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 83%. 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 Penguins were ahead in it, below while the Golden Knights were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 3:24 Tomas Hertl scored on a deflected shot from 10 feetShooting · 12% chance +16% VGK –
2 P3 18:51 Tommy Novak scored on a wrist shot from 3 feetShooting · 46% chance +14% PIT –
3 P3 10:02 Rickard Rakell scored on a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 17% chance +26% PIT –
4 P3 8:41 The game turned hereTrevor Connelly scored on a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 17% chance +27% VGK –
5 P3 4:03 Holding the stick on the Golden Knights (Jeremy Lauzon): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +9% PIT –
6 P3 3:25 High sticking on the Golden Knights (Brayden McNabb): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +9% PIT –
7 P3 1:17 Tripping on the Penguins (Tommy Novak): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +10% VGK –
8 P3 0:35 Tomas Hertl scored on a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 30% chance +33% VGK –

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

Golden Knights 42% · Penguins 58%

Final margin
Golden Knights by 1
Luck in goals
1.1 for the Golden Knights
Luck-adjusted margin
Penguins by 0.1
Replay with same day's form
Golden Knights 46% · Penguins 54% 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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