MIN @ NSH
2026-10-01 · final 3–1 · what happened, next to what the engine said before puck drop
3.13–1.58
What happened
MIN attacks the left net, NSH the right — every unblocked attempt the game produced: × goals, • on net, ◦ missed (hover a marker for the shooter and its xG). To compare against the pregame call, switch the Surface to the engine's predicted-xG map — the shots land on top of where the engine expected the game to be played.
The Wild beat the Predators 3–1 on the road, and the chances agreed: MIN out-created NSH 3.1–1.6 in expected goals. The Wild power play made 0.9 xG on 15 attempts.
Counts come from the shot table behind the maps: empty-net attempts and the shootout are excluded, so the goals in the map can trail the official final by an empty-netter or the shootout's deciding goal. Same numbers, same grammar as the post-game cards.
As the game went
One line: cumulative MIN minus NSH expected goals. Above zero MIN is ahead on chances, below zero NSH is. Shaded bands are power plays in the side's colour; vertical lines are goals.
Skaters
Every skater, sorted by net on-ice expected goals: on-ice xG against to the left of zero, for to the right, his own attempts as the solid bar, a hash at the net. The slim track under the name is ice time.
MIN skaters
NSH skaters
Lines
The forward lines and defence pairs that actually played together most at 5v5, each with when it was on the ice across the game clock (period and power-play bands behind the strip) and on-ice xG against/for while the whole unit was out.
MIN lines
NSH lines
Matchups
5v5 · every skater against every skater, goalies first · hover a cellHow to read this
Rows are MIN's skaters, columns NSH's, grouped the way they played: forward lines (L1 = the line that played together most), then defence pairs. Each cell covers the five-on-five time those two players shared the ice. Its colour is the club that out-chanced the other in that time — expected goals for minus against — and the stronger the colour, the bigger the margin. Each cell is also raised: the taller the block, the longer the two shared the ice, up to full height at 12:00 of five-on-five time. A grey cell means they met and it came out even; an open, flat one means they never met at five-on-five.
The first row and column are the goalies. A goalie is in net for every five-on-five second, so a skater's cell against the other side's goalie is all of that skater's five-on-five time against that team — the rest of his row or column added up — and the corner where the two goalies meet is the game's five-on-five. Those cells cover far more time than any pair, so they reach full colour sooner and stand at full height, a wall along each edge of the grid. A goalie change adds a second goalie row or column, each covering his own time.
Linemates share the ice, so a line against a line reads as a block. The margin is a total, not a rate: a long matchup has room to build a big gap and a thirty-second one does not — which is what the height is there to show: a tall, strong cell is the game's story; a short, strong one is a moment. Hover (or tap) any cell for the exact time together, the xG each way, attempts and goals. One game — a strong cell is what happened, not what would happen again.
Goals
| Team | Scorer | Period | Strength | xG |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MIN | Nick Foligno | 1 | 5v5 | 0.08 |
| MIN | Blake Coleman | 1 | PP | 0.22 |
| NSH | Roman Josi | 2 | 5v5 | 0.04 |
| MIN | Kirill Kaprizov | 3 | 5v5 | 0.07 |
The prediction, scored
Before puck drop the engine made MIN a 54.4% favorite, expecting a 3.36–3.08 game — MIN won 3–1, so the call landed. Every number in this section was issued before the game and is never re-graded.
| pred. xG | actual xG | pred. 5v5 | actual 5v5 | pred. ST | actual PP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MIN | 3.36 | 3.13 | 2.60 | 2.17 | 1.01 | 0.94 |
| NSH | 3.08 | 1.58 | 1.81 | 0.89 | 1.86 | 0.69 |
Predicted 5v5 / special-teams portions come from the map's strength splits (one shared scale per team pins the all-strengths total to its expected goals), so they don't sum exactly — the remainder is 4v4, 3v3, and other mixed states. The actual PP column is power-play xG only, the same bucket the map's special-teams view draws.
The pregame score grid
The likeliest finals the engine saw before the game, with what actually happened marked — ■ MIN · ■ NSH.
| Likeliest finals (MIN–NSH) | probability | |
|---|---|---|
| 3–3 | 4.9% | tied after regulation — OT/SO decides |
| 3–2 | 4.8% | |
| 2–3 | 4.4% | |
| 2–2 | 4.3% | tied after regulation — OT/SO decides |
| 4–3 | 4.1% | |
| 3–1 | 3.1% | what happened |
Scoreline odds treat the two teams' totals as independent — the engine's known simplification (it slightly under-counts regulation ties; the correlation term is registered v1.1 work). The OT/SO layer is a separate fitted model and is already inside the headline win probability.
The pregame read
The engine made MIN a 54.4% favorite — NSH controls 47.8% of the predicted xG. Of MIN's 3.36 expected goals, 2.60 should come at 5v5 and 1.01 on the power play; NSH projects 1.81 at 5v5 and 1.86 on the power play. The logistic challenger put the home side at 43.3%, Elo at 50.8%.
Tale of the tape
How each team fares on its own, season to date: per-game xG rates with league rank (of 31). Rank 1 is best on every row — orange ranks sit in the top third of the league, gray in the bottom third.
| MIN | NSH | |
|---|---|---|
| 3.13 (10th) | Offense xG for / game |
1.58 (31st) |
| 1.58 (3rd) | Defense xG against / game |
3.13 (24th) |
| 0.94 (12th) | Power play PP xG / game |
0.69 (17th) |
| 0.69 (14th) | Penalty kill PP xG conceded / game |
0.94 (21st) |
Season-to-date form as of the site's latest build, shown for context — the ratings the engine actually used were its own as-of-game-day state. Replay this matchup in the lab →