2026-27 regular season · November 5, 2026
No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.
Hurricanes at Islanders, Nov 5, 2026: who deserved to win?
The Hurricanes beat the Islanders 5–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Hurricanes win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: goaltending alone was worth 24 points of win probability to the Hurricanes.
The biggest swing (P3, 5:08 left): William Carrier scored on a backhand shot from 7 feet, worth 34 points of win probability to the Hurricanes.
Final
 Carolina Hurricanes | 5 |
|---|---|
 New York Islanders | 3 |
Replay with same day's form
Luck index +55 Hurricanes lucky · −55 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. Hurricanes win 5, Islanders win 5.
- 1 CAR 5 NYI 1
- 2 CAR 5 NYI 2
- 3 CAR 4 NYI 2
- 4 CAR 4 NYI 3
- 5 CAR 3 NYI 2
- 6 CAR 0 NYI 1
- 7 CAR 2 NYI 3
- 8 CAR 2 NYI 4
- 9 CAR 3 NYI 6
- 10 CAR 2 NYI 7
Our prediction before puck drop
We had the Hurricanes by 0.6, 60% to win. The Hurricanes won by 2: the pick was right. The final margin was 1.4 goals from ours; 66% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.
Show as a table
| Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|
| Hurricanes win | 60.1% |
| Islanders win | 39.9% |
| Middle 50%: Hurricanes by 3 to Islanders by 1 | 50% |
| Middle 90%: Hurricanes by 4 to Islanders by 4 | 90% |
| Middle 95%: Hurricanes by 5 to Islanders by 4 | 95% |
| Exactly Hurricanes by 1 | 21.7% |
| Exactly Islanders by 1 | 18.5% |
| Exactly Hurricanes by 3 | 14.8% |
| Exactly Hurricanes by 2 | 12.0% |
| Exactly Islanders by 3 | 8.6% |
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 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.
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 4,000.1 replays ended
Hurricanes win 45% of them, Islanders 55%. The line is what actually happened: Hurricanes by 2.
Show as a table
| Final margin in the replays | Share of replays |
|---|---|
| Hurricanes by 3+ | 16.5% |
| Hurricanes by 2 | 9.1% |
| Hurricanes by 1 | 19.7% |
| Islanders by 1 | 19.4% |
| Islanders by 2 | 10.5% |
| Islanders by 3+ | 24.8% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Hurricanes | 50 | 4 | 3.02 | +0.98 |
 Islanders | 40 | 3 | 3.67 | −0.67 |
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 16:25 | Holding the stick on the Hurricanes (Sean Walker): 2 minutes on the power play | +3% NYI |
| P2 12:37 | Holding on the Hurricanes (Shayne Gostisbehere): 2 minutes on the power play | +4% NYI |
| P2 0:35 | Holding on the Islanders (Adam Pelech): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% CAR |
| P3 15:39 | Tripping on the Hurricanes (Jackson Blake): 2 minutes on the power play | +6% NYI |
| P3 15:13 | Holding the stick on the Islanders (Brayden Schenn): 2 minutes on the power play | +7% CAR |
| P3 11:58 | High sticking on the Hurricanes (Mark Jankowski): 2 minutes on the power play | +7% 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.
| # | When | What happened | Win probability for | Next drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 19:03 | Logan Stankoven scored on a snap shot from 32 feetShooting · 7% chance | +15% CAR | – |
| 2 | P1 16:40 | Jesperi Kotkaniemi scored on a deflected shot from 10 feetShooting · 7% chance | +13% CAR | – |
| 3 | P2 16:20 | Mitchell Chaffee scored on a tip from 13 feetShooting · 8% chance | +15% NYI | – |
| 4 | P2 14:16 | Brayden Schenn scored on a wraparound from 3 feetShooting · 9% chance | +19% NYI | – |
| 5 | P2 13:16 | Andrei Svechnikov scored on a backhand shot from 10 feetShooting · 10% chance | +19% CAR | – |
| 6 | P2 2:47 | Victor Eklund scored on a slap shot from 32 feetShooting · 11% chance | +22% NYI | – |
| 7 | P3 9:49 | Simon Holmstrom’s snap shot from 7 feet was savedShooting · 27% chance | +9% CAR | – |
| 8 | P3 5:08 | William Carrier scored on a backhand shot from 7 feetShooting · 10% chance | +34% CAR | – |
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
Hurricanes 57% · Islanders 43%
- Final margin
- Hurricanes by 2
- Luck in goals
- 1.7 for the Hurricanes
- Luck-adjusted margin
- Hurricanes by 0.3
- Replay with same day's form
- Hurricanes 45% · Islanders 55% 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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