November 3 Recap: The Model Liked the Bad Guys — and the Bad Guys Won

Eleven games, eleven projections frozen before puck drop. The model called five winners and no exact scores. Both numbers are on the table below, and neither one can be edited after the fact.

The hits came where nobody else was looking. Minnesota beat Philadelphia 4 to 2 on a night the Flyers owned the popular opinion; the model had given the Wild 71 percent anyway. Anaheim won a five-goal game in Vancouver the way the model said it would, just one goal short on the arithmetic. Dallas, Vegas and Tampa all won the close ones the model had them in, and three of the night’s five hits were decided by a single goal.

The misses were the popular teams. Montreal was the night’s strongest conviction at 69 percent and lost 5 to 4 to Winnipeg. Carolina carried the same 69 percent into Nashville as the visiting favorite and gave up four goals in a 4 to 1 loss. Colorado was a 67 percent road favorite and instead lost 7 to 2 to a Blue Jackets team that scored at will. Utah won in Toronto, New Jersey won in Edmonton, and St. Louis sat on the wrong side of a coin flip in New York.

One night is eleven games, which in statistics is barely a word yet. What gets graded over the next two months is not the scoreboard but the distribution: whether the 70 percent teams actually win seventy percent of the time. That ledger lives in the archive, frozen pre-game, and it opens with five of eleven.

The night, game by game

Final	The model said	Win %	Call
UTA 3 at TOR 2	TOR slight edge	47%	✗ Miss
WPG 5 at MTL 4	MTL strong favorite	69%	✗ Miss
TBL 4 at DET 2	TBL slight edge	49%	✓ Winner
NJD 4 at EDM 3	EDM slight edge	48%	✗ Miss
NYR 3 at STL 1	Coin flip	~50%	✗ Miss
MIN 4 at PHI 2	MIN 4-3 projected	71%	✓ Winner
VGK 3 at PIT 2	VGK 3-2 projected	49%	✓ Winner
DAL 6 at WSH 5	DAL 2-2 coin flip	46%	✓ Winner
CBJ 7 at COL 2	COL strong road favorite	67%	✗ Miss
NSH 4 at CAR 1	CAR strong favorite	69%	✗ Miss
ANA 5 at VAN 4	ANA 4-3 projected	54%	✓ Winner