NHL Goal Predictor

What this dashboard publishes

The NHL Goal Predictor is a daily-updating data-science project that publishes per-player goal-scoring probabilities for every skater in tonight's NHL games. Eight different models — a sportsbook-implied baseline, a hand-tuned linear formula, a 10,000-simulation Monte Carlo, a tree-based expected-goals (xG) model, a lineup-aware variant, two neural networks, and a stacked meta-ensemble — score each player every morning and publish their results to this page.

The headline section below — Today's Consensus Picks — shows the highest-probability player from each Tim Hortons Hockey Challenge group, with the probability averaged across all models that ran successfully tonight. Below that, the model selector lets you view each model's individual ranking, and the predictions table shows the full slate, searchable and filterable by position. The Yesterday's Top 10 panel reports how well each model's previous-day picks did against actual scorers — a continuous, public accountability check.

Three principles drive the project:

• No single model wins. Each of the eight has different strengths and failure modes. The Meta Ensemble combines them with isotonic calibration; the consensus average gives a second, simpler aggregation.
• Show the work. Every model's full output is committed to a public GitHub repository as JSON. Every prediction can be checked against the actual goal scorers later that night.
• Probability is not advice. A 35% goal probability means the model thinks there is roughly a 35% chance the player scores at least one goal in tonight's game. It is not a betting recommendation, a financial product, or a guarantee. See the FAQ and terms for the full disclaimer.

For the technical writeup of every model — features, formulas, training pipeline, calibration — see the methodology page. For the project's origin story and what's deferred for the next iteration, see the project about page. For historical accuracy day by day, see the archive. For definitions of every hockey, ML, and probability term that appears on this site, see the glossary.