BOSTON — The Sharks were kicking themselves Tuesday night over the one that got away.
Oh, San Jose was a resilient team in its 5-3 loss to the Boston Bruins — bouncing back from a poor outing the previous game and overcoming a one-goal deficit at TD Garden to carry a lead into the third period.
But Boston was more resilient when it mattered most, an opportunistic team that scored three unanswered goals in the final period and didn’t let a four-minute high-sticking penalty as the clock ticked down bother them.
“That’s a game we needed to get at least a point,” said Logan Couture, whose two goals paced San Jose’s offense. “We kind of let that one slip away. Those goals that we gave up, they were very preventable. It’s not like they were making great plays — we were giving them their chances.”
Goalie Antti Niemi suffered his first loss of the young season after three wins, giving up goals to Brad Marchand, Torey Krug, Seth Griffiths and Greg Campbell. Boston’s fifth goal, by David Krejci, went into an empty net. Joe Thornton also scored for San Jose against his former team.
The Sharks did have a good opportunity to even things up when Bruins center Patrice Bergeron took a four-minute high-sticking penalty with just 4:09 left in the game. But that tying goal eluded them, even after Niemi was pulled with 1:07 left.
The teams traded power play goals in the first period, Marchand beating Niemi on the glove side at 13:57, then Couture getting the blade of his stick on a shot by Patrick Marleau at 16:28.
The Sharks fell behind at 6:54 of the second period on Boston’s second power play goal. The Bruins only needed eight seconds after Andrew Desjardins went to the penalty box for tripping before Krug scored on a shot from the blue line.
But San Jose bounced back on a pair of even strength goals 37 seconds apart by Couture and Thornton late in the second period to take a 3-2 lead going into the third.
In the third period, the Sharks made just enough mistakes for the Bruins to win.
San Jose was scrambling in its own end when rookie defenseman Griffiths pinched in to pounce on a loose puck for his first NHL goal at 4:50.
“That third goal, we knocked it down with a high stick and everybody lost track of it,” coach Todd McLellan said. “Sometimes that happens.”
And the Bruins took a 4-3 lead at 10:42 when Justin Braun’s attempt to wrap the puck around the end boards to Marc-Edouard Vlasic wound up on the stick of Bruins forward Daniel Paille, who threw it to the front of the net where Campbell put it behind Niemi.
“The winner was a d-to-d, and we lost our stick in the corner and that didn’t help us one bit,” McLellan said. “The fourth one was probably more difficult to swallow because we had a chance to come out and at least defend if we hadn’t lost our stick.”
The loss dropped the Sharks to 4-2-1 on the season and 2-2-1 on its five-game East Coast trek.
McLellan, who tinkered with all four of his lines after that poor showing in New York, tried to be realistic in his assessment and not dwell on the final two games.
“We were .500 on the road at the beginning of the season without a lot of practice time,” he said. “It’s not an easy trip. We played in tough buildings. I’m going to sound like we’re satisfied saying that, but we’re not. Would we have liked to come home 3-1-1? Yeah, but we didn’t, and now we have to make some hay at home for a couple games.”
For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak’s Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/PollakOnSharks.
thursday’s GAME
Columbus (3-2) at Sharks (4-2-1), 7:30 p.m., CSNCA
