"When two teams play each other as tightly as the Sharks and the Vancouver Canucks do, winning or losing comes down to an odd bounce here, a missed assignment there.

Saturday afternoon, the Sharks were on the wrong end of both, leaving Rogers Arena as 4-3 losers in a twist-and-turn-filled game in which three goals were scored 92 seconds apart late in the third period.

"Two teams play very good against each other, and we made one more mistake than they did," Sharks coach Todd McLellan said. "The frustrating thing is we're aware of the mistakes we're making, and we're still executing them."

Had the Sharks won, the focus would have been on two spectacular goals by Logan Couture -- one short-handed, the other on a power play -- that provided their only offense through the first two periods.

But the Sharks lost to the Canucks -- the team that eliminated them from the playoffs last spring -- for the third time in four games this season (all of them decided by one goal), and so talk turned to what went wrong.

Cody Hodgson's second goal of the night with 4:17 left held up as the winner as what appeared to be a centering pass bounced off Sharks forward Michal Handzus' stick and past goalie Antti Niemi."