The Sharks dug themselves a hole early on and climbed back in the second and third periods, only to dig themselves a deeper hole as they fall 7-3 to the Calgary Flames in the second consecutive game between these two teams.
This Sharks team continues to give me false hope time and time again. The hole they dug themselves in early on was allowing two goals to the Flames in the first 30 seconds of the game via Tyler Toffoli and Dillon Dube respectively. Late in the first, the Sharks got back in it with a goal from Nico Sturm, with the assist from Timo Meier. Soon after, before the end of the first period, Nico Sturm and Brett Ritchie fought in Sturm's attempt to stand up for Marc-Eduoard Vlasic, who got ran over by Ritchie prior to the fight. This was only the second fight of Nico Sturm's NHL career.
Around the halfway point of the second period, Trevor Lewis extends the Flames' lead to two. The Sharks got back within one right before the second intermission on Alexander Barabanov's fourth goal of the season from Scott Harrington and Matt Nieto.
A few minutes into the third, Timo Meier tied the game at three with his 17th goal of the year, getting an assist from Erik Karlsson. It was impressive that Team Teal erased their deficit early in the third, but things only went downhill from there. The Flames regained their lead at around the ten-minute mark via Nazem Kadri, then proceeded to allow Milan Lucic to score his second goal of the year during the second half of the third. Both of Lucic's goals this season came in the past two games against the Sharks. The Flames then added two more goals in the last few minutes via an empty-netter from Tyler Toffoli and Nazem Kadri's second of the game 20 seconds after the empty-netter.
James Reimer performed better than what his stats indicated, making 32 saves and helping keep the Sharks in this one for most of it. To make matters worse, Tomas Hertl was suspended two games for high-sticking Elias Lindholm during Sunday's game and won't be able to return until after the Christmas break, and Luke Kunin underwent successful surgery to repair a torn ACL, ending his season. However, the return of Mario Ferraro from injury helped soften the blow of the Sharks' current predicament.
Although they came back and tied it at one point, the Sharks could never fully recover from the two goals that the Flames scored in the first 30 seconds of this game, and I already had a bad feeling about this one after the news broke about Tomas Hertl and Luke Kunin. Team Teal plays one more game before the NHL Christmas break on Thursday, when they host the Minnesota Wild at 7:30 pm PT.
Sources: NBC Sports Bay Area/California, NHL App, Bay Area News Group
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