luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · November 5, 2026 · OT

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

Blues at Devils, Nov 5, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Devils beat the Blues 5–4, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 6 of 10. The Blues had the bounces: goaltending alone was worth 12 points of win probability to the Blues.

The biggest swing (OT): the Devils won in overtime, worth 49 points of win probability to the Devils.

Final (OT)

St. Louis Blues 4
New Jersey Devils 5

November 5, 2026 · Prudential Center

Our prediction before puck drop: Devils by 0.5

Luck index +40 Devils lucky · −40 Blues

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 4, Devils win 6.

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

Our prediction before puck drop

We had the Devils by 0.5, 58% to win. The Devils won by 1: the pick was right. The final margin was 0.5 goals from ours; 78% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Blues win41.9%
Devils win58.1%
Middle 50%: Blues by 1 to Devils by 350%
Middle 90%: Blues by 4 to Devils by 490%
Middle 95%: Blues by 4 to Devils by 595%
Exactly Devils by 122.1%
Exactly Blues by 118.6%
Exactly Devils by 314.3%
Exactly Devils by 210.9%
Exactly Blues by 39.1%

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 Thu, Nov 5, 1:24 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 4,000.3 replays ended

Blues win 40% of them, Devils 60%. The line is what actually happened: Devils by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Blues by 3+13.9%
Blues by 28.6%
Blues by 117.5%
Devils by 118.2%
Devils by 211.2%
Devils by 3+30.7%

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 +0.6 goals to the Devils: the final margin was Devils by 1, without the luck Devils by 0.5. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Blues4243.07+0.93
Devils4743.64+0.36

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 16:56 Hooking on the Blues (Justin Barron): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NJD
P2 17:55 Instigator on the Devils (Timo Meier): 2 minutes on the power play +4% STL
P2 4:43 Slashing on the Devils (Amadeus Lombardi): 2 minutes on the power play +3% STL
P2 1:22 Slashing on the Devils (Johnathan Kovacevic): 2 minutes on the power play +1% STL
P3 15:20 Slashing on the Blues (Robert Thomas): 2 minutes on the power play +1% NJD
P3 3:01 Hooking on the Blues (Mason McTavish): 2 minutes on the power play +10% NJD

When it happened

Devils’ chance of winning

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 Devils were ahead in it, below while the Blues were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 12:26 Luke Hughes scored on a wrist shot from 41 feetShooting · 4% chance +16% NJD –
2 P2 7:58 Anthony Mantha scored on a wrist shot from 17 feetShooting · 18% chance +12% NJD –
3 P2 3:56 Robert Thomas scored on a snap shot from 15 feetShooting · 12% chance +13% STL –
4 P2 2:00 Jesper Boqvist scored on a wrist shot from 6 feetShooting · 22% chance +12% NJD –
5 P3 5:24 Philip Broberg scored on a wrist shot from 31 feetShooting · 4% chance +9% STL –
6 P3 5:06 Dalibor Dvorsky scored on a tip from 5 feetShooting · 15% chance +32% STL –
7 P3 3:01 Hooking on the Blues (Mason McTavish): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +10% NJD –
8 OT The Devils won in overtimeOvertime · overtime is close to a coin flip +49% NJD –

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 42% · Devils 58%

Final margin
Devils by 1
Luck in goals
0.6 for the Devils
Luck-adjusted margin
Devils by 0.4
Replay with same day's form
Blues 40% · Devils 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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