The Vancouver Canucks outshot and outhit the San Jose Sharks, but were unable to come away with the win in Thursday’s game.
Vancouver (22-29-6) entered the Shark Tank at the SAP Center to face San Jose (30-19-8) for the fourth out of five meetings this season.
The Canucks are 5-9-1 against teams from the Pacific Division and 1-3-1 in their last five games against San Jose.
They fell behind midway through the first period at 8:41 when Sharks’ centre Chris Tierney sent a centering pass in front of the net to Mikkel Boedker, who ripped one past Canucks’ goaltender Anders Nilsson.
The second period was much of the same, when at 4:57, Sharks’ defensemen Brent Burns made it 2-0 off a one-timer from Joakim Ryan at the top of the blue line for a team-leading 49th point on the season.
San Jose’s Marcus Sorensen made it 3-0 three minutes and six seconds into the third period, when he snapped a wrist shot glove side on Nilsson from the top of the right circle.
Moments later, Vancouver finally got on the score sheet when Thomas Vanek found Daniel Sedin skating hard to the net with a cross-crease pass to bring the Canucks within two goals of tying the game.
With 7:27 left, Sharks’ Tierney scored his 14th goal of the season when Burns sent him a hard pass to the side of the net to make the score 4-1.
Thursday’s game was Nilsson’s 17th start of the season. He had a record of 6-9-1 and a goals against average of 3.35. He made 26 saves out of 30 shots faced and earned himself the loss.
Sharks’ goaltender and North Vancouver native Martin Jones made 43 saves out of 44 shots faced.
Vancouver defensemen Ben Hutton and Philip Holm, along with forward Sven Baertschi, were healthy scratches in the contest.
Vanek has seven points in his last 11 games, while Henrik Sedin has five assists in the past nine games.
