TAMPA, FLORIDA – MAY 03: Jakub Dobes #75, Alexandre Carrier #45 and Kaiden Guhle #21 of the Montréal Canadiens celebrate after defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 in Game Seven of the First Round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Amalie Arena on May 03, 2026 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Mike Carlson/Getty Images)
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The push notification looked like a glitch. The Montreal Canadiens had beaten the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of their first-round playoff series despite being outshot 29-9. Montreal had only nine shots on goal, went nearly 27 minutes without one, failed to register a single shot in the second period, and still won 2-1 on Alex Newhook’s third-period goal. It was the lowest shot total by a winning playoff team since shots on goal became an official statistic in 1959-60.
That would be strange enough as a one-off. But it was not even the first time in this postseason that a team won a playoff game while being outshot by 20. On April 24, the Utah Mammoth beat the Vegas Golden Knights 4-2 in Game 3 of their first-round series. Karel Vejmelka made 30 saves for Utah, while Vegas goalie Carter Hart made only eight, and Utah won its first home playoff game in franchise history despite being outshot by the same 20-shot margin.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – APRIL 24: (EDITORS NOTE: Image was captured using a remote camera.) Jack Eichel #9 of the Vegas Golden Knights scores a goal during the second period against the Utah Mammoth in Game Three of the First Round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Delta Center on April 24, 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by Hunter Dyke/NHLI via Getty Images)
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Shot differential is one of hockey’s most intuitive numbers. More shots usually suggest more possession, more offensive-zone time, more pressure, and more chances to force a goalie into mistakes. But the Canadiens and Mammoth are reminders that the shot differential is not the scoreboard. A 20-shot deficit is unusual, but in the NHL, it is not a guarantee. In fact, a look at 2025-2026 regular-season shot data shows that shot differential is associated with winning, but not nearly as strongly as the raw shot totals on a broadcast might suggest.
Regular Season Shot Differential Sheds Light On NHL Playoffs Outcomes
To measure the relationship between shot differential and winning, I treated every game of the 2025-2026 NHL Regular Season as two separate team-level observations from NHL Stats: one from the winner’s perspective and one from the loser’s. Shot differential was defined as shots for minus shots against.
Anaheim Ducks center Jansen Harkins (24) falls to the ice while battling for the puck with Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Carter Hart (79) during the second period of Game 2 of a second-round NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
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Winning teams are not clustered around a positive shot differential, where one might expect if shot volume were driving results by itself. Instead, the distribution is centered almost perfectly around zero shot differential. The average winning team finished just +0.73 in shot differential, while the median winning team finished at 0.00.
Winning teams in the 2025-26 NHL regular season were centered almost exactly around zero shot differential, with an average margin of +0.73 shots and a median of 0.00. The horizontal axis shows the shot differential of the winning team while the y axis shows the frequency of games in which the differential occurred. The left tail shows that teams can still win despite being heavily outshot, a regular-season pattern that helps explain playoff outliers like Montreal and Utah winning NHL Playoff games despite 20-shot deficits.
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In other words, the typical NHL winner was not necessarily the team that took more shots. The tails of the chart are where the NHL Playoffs connection becomes obvious. On the right side are the more intuitive games: winners that had large shot advantages and turned that pressure into a result. On the left side are the games where teams won despite being outshot by 15, 20 or even 30. That is where Montreal’s Game 7 against Tampa Bay and Utah’s win over Vegas fit. Those games are extreme, but they are not outside the logic of the season.
Modeling Winning Percentage Given Shot Differential
The raw distribution shows that NHL winners can come from both sides of the shot ledger. But raw results can get noisy, especially at the extremes. A few goalie steals or empty-volume games can make the raw win percentage look more dramatic than the underlying relationship really is. So, the next step was to smooth the results with a probability model. Instead of asking what happened in one narrow shot-differential bucket, the model asks a broader question: if shot differential were the only thing known about a team, how much would it say about that team’s chance of winning the game?
Buffalo Sabres right wing Josh Doan, left, is stopped by Montréal Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobes (75) during the first period in Game 1 of a second-round NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series, Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
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The answer is surprisingly modest. Teams with better shot differentials are more likely to win, and teams that get badly outshot are less likely to win. But the difference in likelihood is not dramatic. At an even shot differential, the model puts the win probability at almost exactly 50%. At +30, it rises only to about 60.9%. At -30, it still leaves a team with roughly a 39.1% chance to win.
A smoothed probability model shows that shot differential moves win probability in the expected direction, but only modestly. The horizontal axis shows a team’s shot differential, the vertical axis shows that team’s chance of winning, the gray dots are raw observed win rates, and the blue line is a smoothed predictive curve. In the 2025-26 NHL regular season data, a team at even shots is roughly a coin flip, while a +30 shot differential raises its estimated win probability to about 60.9% and a -30 differential still leaves it near 39.1%.
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The key insight is that a team outshot by 20 is clearly facing an uphill battle. But it is not an insurmountable climb. The model helps explain why games like Montreal-Tampa and Utah-Vegas can look outrageous in the moment while still fitting within the broader logic of NHL outcomes.
The Meaning Of Shot Differential In The NHL Playoffs
Minnesota Wild center Yakov Trenin (13) and Colorado Avalanche defenseman Brett Kulak (27) in the second period of Game 2 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series Tuesday, May 5, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This analysis puts shot differential in its proper context. Shot totals capture volume, not the full texture of a game: the quality of the chances, the value of power plays, or the goaltending required to survive them. Montreal’s win was historic, but it will be remembered as more than a 20-shot deficit oddity. It was a gutsy Game 7 performance against a talented Tampa Bay roster, and a reminder that shot differential is a weak signal rather than a strong verdict.