BUFFALO QUANT DESK
Sabres · Pregame

Sabres at Blackhawks: the NHL's weakest team by chances, but Buffalo is on tired legs

Our model: Sabres 57%, Blackhawks 43%. Chicago creates the fewest chances in the NHL. But Buffalo played last night, and tired road teams have won less often than our model expects.

November 12, 2026 · Buffalo Quant Desk

Chicago creates the fewest chances in the NHL and allows the 2nd-most, and our model gives the Sabres a 57% chance to win (Blackhawks 43%). But Buffalo played last night, and the model doesn't know that. Road teams on the second night of a back-to-back against a rested home team have won only 38% of the time, even though our model gave them 46%. Read our 57% as too high.

Buffalo at Chicago, Thursday, Nov. 12, 8 p.m. ET, United Center. The Sabres lost 8-3 to Tampa Bay at home last night; the Blackhawks haven't played since Nov. 7. Numbers are 2026-27 through November 11: Sabres 8-7-3 in 18 games, Blackhawks 4-13-1 in 18. Eighteen games is early; ranks can move a lot.

Chances created vs allowed

The two teams, side by side

Per game, 2026-27 Sabres Blackhawks League average
Chances created (goals they were worth) 3.13 (8th) 2.34 (32nd) 2.97
Chances allowed 3.29 (28th) 3.42 (31st) 2.97
Share of the chances in their games 48.8% (20th) 40.6% (32nd) 50%
Goals scored, actual 2.94 2.17
Goals allowed, actual 3.61 4.22
Shots from within 20 feet 13.4 (14th) 10.8 (30th) 13.3
Shots allowed from within 20 feet 12.9 (14th) 16.2 (30th) 13.3
Rebound shots created 3.8 (7th) 3.1 (22nd) 3.3
Share of chances, last 5 games 47.6% 40.0%

Ranks are among 32 teams; 1st is best (most created, fewest allowed). Actual goals come from final scores; chances leave out empty-net shots.

How we measure "chances"

Every shot has a chance of going in, based on where it was taken and what kind of shot it was. Over the last three seasons (336,462 shots that weren't blocked, not counting empty nets), a shot from within 10 feet went in 13.8% of the time; one from 60 feet or more, 0.8%. Add up those chances on every shot and you get what a team's chances were worth in goals.

The source: the NHL's own play-by-play feed, which records where every shot came from. The math: each shot's chance comes from our model, built on past seasons and tested on a season it hadn't seen; we nudge each season's totals so the league's chances add up to the league's real goals. How we checked it: the full explanation, with the chart, is in our story on last year's 50-win season.

The catch: the second night of a back-to-back

Back-to-backs

Since the start of 2023-24 there have been 643 games like tonight's: a road team playing for the second night in a row against a home team that had at least a day off. The tired road team won 38% of them. When both teams were rested, road teams won 47% (3,099 games). That's a gap of 8.5 percentage points over 643 games, far too big to be luck, and it showed up in every season (this season's 49 games are a small sample on their own).

Our model misses it. It rates teams by the chances they create and allow, and it doesn't know who played the night before. Look at last season and this one, games the model never saw while it was being built. In the 242 games like tonight's, it gave the tired road team 46% on average, and those teams won 38%: 8 percentage points short. Rested road teams went the other way, winning 49% when it gave them 45%, 4 points better than it said. So the model is a little low on road teams in general, and the second night swings that by about 12 points.

Where the drop comes from is less clear. Tired road teams still got about 47% of the chances in those games, barely below the 48% for rested road teams. Their usual starting goalie was in net 37% of the time, against 62% when rested, but the goalies who did play were only about 0.06 of a goal a game worse than average. Both are small next to the drop in wins. What we can say is how often it's happened.

For Buffalo tonight: both Sabres goalies played in last night's loss. Buffalo's only other second night this season was Oct. 13 at Montreal, a 4-3 shootout loss.

In goal

Goals saved compared with an average goalie facing the same shots. Positive is good. Tap a Sabres goalie for his card.

Team Goalie Games played in Saves Goals saved vs. average
Sabres Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen 12 86.7% -3.2 (60th of 75)
Sabres Colten Ellis 8 87.3% -0.6 (39th of 75)
Blackhawks Spencer Knight 14 88.1% -2.3 (56th of 75)
Blackhawks Arvid Soderblom 5 84.2% -6.2 (69th of 75)

Ranks are among all 75 goalies who have played this season. We hadn't seen confirmed starters when we published. These are small samples: a goalie's numbers over a dozen games can swing a lot.

Our prediction: Sabres 57%, Blackhawks 43%

Logged on the Ledger at 2026-11-12 22:57:33 UTC, before puck drop. It gets graded after the game, hit or miss.

Our model expects about 3.5 goals for Buffalo and 3.0 for Chicago, and gives about a 16% chance the game is tied after 60 minutes. That's the number we log, because it's the model we've tested. The back-to-back history above says to read it as too high: in games like this, tired road teams have fallen about 8 percentage points short of what the model said.

Where the number comes from. The same chances numbers above. Buffalo creates chances worth 3.13 goals a game; Chicago allows 3.42. Eighteen games is a small sample, so we blend in last season's numbers and pull them toward the league average. That makes Buffalo's attack worth 3.11 a game and Chicago's defense 3.33, against a league average of 3.00. (That's a hair above the table's 2.97 because the model works with chances before we match them to this season's real goals; it has its own formula for turning them into goals.) We do the same the other way for Chicago. Home ice adds about 0.27 of a goal for the Blackhawks. Then we play the game out on paper many times. Ties after 60 minutes go the way they have for home teams in past overtimes and shootouts (55% home wins).

Model test

How we checked it. We built the model on the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons, then had it call every 2025-26 game using only what was known before each game. It called the winner 55% of the time; choosing the home team every time would have been right 52%. This season so far (298 games) it has called 61% right; home teams have won 56%. When it gave a team 55-60% in 2025-26, as it does Buffalo tonight, that team won 54% of the time (426 games).

What it doesn't count: goalies, or rest. We tested adding each game's starting goalie and it made the predictions no better: a goalie's goals saved in the first half of a season tells you little about his second half. Rest is the gap this story found, and it's on our list to test as part of the model itself, the same way we tested goalies, before we add it.

What to watch

For the stat-heads