The San Jose Sharks dropped a third straight decision to the Vancouver Canucks, giving up at least four goals in each loss. It was Tomas Hertl’s first game back in 10 days, following a two-game suspension and the NHL holiday break, and yet another beautiful jersey match-up between the two Pacific Division rivals.
In this game, like in previous outings against Vancouver, San Jose struggled to keep the Canucks’ top stars off the scoring sheet. It may have felt like deja vu to watch Elias Pettersson, Ilya Mikheyev or Andrei Kuzmenko combine to put one after another behind Sharks netminder James Reimer — that’s because it has happened in each of the games between these two thus far.