The NHL's early-season chaos is real, and the numbers prove it. Through the first month of the 2025-26 season, underdogs—teams entering games with less than a 40% chance to win—are defying expectations at an unprecedented rate.
We analyzed every game from October onward, treating each team's perspective separately (meaning both the home and away view of every matchup). What we found should make any hockey fan reconsider the conventional wisdom about favorites and chalk plays.
The Underdog Uprising
Breaking down performance by pregame win probability reveals just how topsy-turvy this season has been:
| Pregame Win Prob | Games | Expected | Actual Win Rate | Performance vs. Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0–10% | 10 | 5.5% | 40.0% | +632% |
| 10–20% | 22 | 16.9% | 45.5% | +169% |
| 20–30% | 13 | 25.4% | 61.5% | +142% |
| 30–40% | 13 | 36.2% | 53.8% | +49% |
The headline number: teams given less than a 40% chance to win are actually winning exactly half the time—50% across 58 underdog situations. That's more than double what our model expected (21.2% average probability).
The most stunning result comes from the longest shots. Ten times this season, a team entered a game with barely a prayer—10% odds or worse. Four of those teams won anyway. That's not just variance; that's hockey's beautiful unpredictability on full display.
What's Driving The Chaos?
Early-season hockey is always a bit wild. Rosters are still gelling, new systems are being installed, and rust from the offseason hasn't fully worn off. Small sample sizes amplify the noise—a hot goalie performance or a fluky bounce can swing entire probability distributions.
The "model-fair ROI" figures shown above (calculated as the ratio of actual wins to expected wins, minus one) aren't suggesting you should bet the farm on underdogs. They simply illustrate how much actual results have surprised compared to pregame expectations. Think of it as a reality check: our model, trained on years of hockey data, thought these outcomes were unlikely. The puck disagreed.
As the season progresses and teams settle into their true identities, we'd expect these numbers to regress toward the mean. The underdogs getting over 60% win rates with 25% odds probably aren't discovering a market inefficiency—they're riding early-season volatility.
The Bottom Line
This analysis covers games played since October 1st, looking at both home and away perspectives for each matchup. While the early returns suggest this might be the Year of the Underdog, the smart money says things will stabilize. Hockey is random, but it's not that random.
Still, if your favorite team is heading into tonight's game as a serious underdog, don't lose hope. This season, anything goes.