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Posted at 11:25 AM EST.

3:05 PM EST. OT included. Perhaps bad teams find ways to lose and good teams find ways to win but we’re not conceding that the Red Wings are a bad team. We’ve liked this team from the start of the year and are suggesting they’ve been on the wrong side of extreme puck luck. The Red Wings lead the league in one-goal losses by a wide margin. After its 3-2 loss to the Wild on Friday, Detroit has an incredible 23 one-goal losses.

In the world of hockey analytics, the dominant theory has been that a team's record in one-goal games is almost entirely unpredictable. This was first established by Gabriel Desjardins of Hockey Prospectus after the 2008-09 season. He ran a regression analysis on every team's data from 1979-80 through 2013-14 and found that the season-to-season correlation of a team's record in one-goal games was an almost nonexistent 0.05. Essentially, the ability to win (or lose) close games comes and goes, which leads to the belief that random, lucky bounces have more to do with it than skill. Detroit's considerable bad luck in this area is expected to be just as likely to expire as it is to continue. Adam Bishop studied each NHL team's set of records from 2006-07 through 2014-15 and found that a team's winning percentage in games decided by two goals or more was far more useful in predicting its future than a team's record in one-goal games. Once again, the Red Wings stand out by a massive margin, as they have been involved in less three-goal games than any team in hockey. The Red Wings have been in every game this year with a chance to win in all but four games. Two of their three-goal losses in the chart were games in which the opposition added two empty netters.

Jeff Blashill’s lineup decisions are constantly baffling (the blue line and power play especially) and his treatment of talents like Andreas Athanasiou are infuriating. The way he handles young guys has typically been underwhelming. However, of late, Jonathan Ericsson has been a healthy scratch and that has led to Filip Hronek getting his way into the lineup. Not only into the lineup, but to the top PP unit, and a top PP unit that actually features their top players (Mantha, Larkin, Athanasiou, Vanek) rather than the talent being spread across two units. Hronek’s underlying numbers are very good. He leads the Red Wings blue-line in both relative shot attempts for and relative shot share. That means Detroit controls more shots with Hronek on the ice than any other defenceman. In limited ice time together, Hronek has dragged Trevor Daley’s numbers to respectability and over the past month, Detroit is ranked 10th in High Scoring Chances Against. We’re just giving you a synopsis of why the Red Wings are so much better than their record and worth getting behind. That said, this one is more about fading the Sharks in a difficult spot.

San Jose played yesterday in a late afternoon (5:00 PM EST) start time. The game ended about 8:00 PM and them the team had to get to Detroit for this mid-afternoon start time. We have no idea what time they’re plane left or landed or what time they got to their hotel or to sleep but a reasonable assumption would be anywhere between 2 and 4:00 AM EST. This is also the Sharks third game in four days but one could say it’s their third game in 3½ days and it’s also worth noting that Erik Karlsson didn’t play in the third period and may have “retweaked his groin,” an injury that forced him to miss nine games this earlier this month and last month. This is strictly a situational play on an undervalued squad at a big price and that is in a favorable spot.

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