San Jose had not won since Dec. 16, but the Sharks put that to rest with a hard-fought 6-3 road win over the Vancouver Canucks, taking an early 2-0 lead and hanging on despite Vancouver cutting the deficit down to one goal three different times.

Ryan Reaves opened the scoring for San Jose (18-17-3) with a tap-in of a loose puck at the 6:13 mark of the first period. John Klingberg doubled the lead with a shot from the center of the blue line at 7:55 after a screen from Igor Chernyshov limited the visibility of Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko.

Vancouver (15-19-3) responded with a power-play goal by Linus Karlsson, who tapped in a cross-ice pass from Conor Garland for an easy score to make it 2-1 at 10:04.

The Sharks stretched the lead back to two goals when William Eklund chipped a puck toward the net just outside the crease and it flipped over Demko’s shoulders and into the back of the net.

Vancouver’s Marco Rossi may have made the final contact on the play, but the goal counted just the same.

Rossi scored on another tipped goal very early in the third period, as the puck deflected up over Yaroslav Askarov in the midst of several chips near the crease.

Igor Chernyshov doubled the deficit once more when he scored his first NHL goal five minutes into the third, depositing a power-play shot around Demko’s left pad at the 4:47 mark.

Drew O’Connor brought the Canucks closer one more time with a shorthanded score at the 10:43 mark of the third period.

Macklin Celebrini added another goal for the Sharks at the 16:20 mark of the third with a stunning one-timer from the left circle. It was Celebrini’s second point of the game, giving him 57 this season.

Collin Graf added an empty-netter at 16:55 to seal the bounce-back win for San Jose.

The loss was the first for Demko in 14 games against the Sharks.

Check back for updates to this story.

San Jose was off for three days with the NHL on its holiday break, but given how their last game went, the Sharks are undoubtedly eager to get back onto the ice. 

The Sharks are sniffing the playoffs, chasing two points behind Los Angeles and Utah as they look to secure their first playoff spot since 2019. 

If Tuesday night’s performance against the Golden Knights was any indication, the Sharks are not ready to make the leap to playoff-caliber team this season after finishing last in the NHL the past two seasons. But they’ll have a good chance to right the ship against Vancouver, which is the worst team in the Pacific Division and one of the worst teams in the league.

Despite trading away their best player in defenseman Quinn Hughes, the Canucks have won four of their last five games. 

But make no mistake. Despite coming back cold after a few days off and coming off a pitiful performance against Vegas, this is the kind of game a playoff team should win. 

It would behoove the Sharks to take care of business Saturday night given what’s ahead on their upcoming schedule. San Jose will travel to Pacific Division co-leader Anaheim after Saturday’s game and then face Minnesota, Hughes’ new team, and Tampa Bay. 

Yaroslav Askarov will be in goal again for the Sharks despite being pulled in the first period Tuesday after giving up four goals on 16 shots against the Golden Knights. Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky offered a passionate defense of Askarov Tuesday night, essentially saying that San Jose’s defensive structure – or lack thereof – set him up to fail.

“Those goals aren’t Asky,” Warsofsky said. “We have to pull Asky, I mean, this kid needs to play. We got to get him going. We got to see him. He’s the future of this franchise as a goaltender. It’s unfair to him to have to pull him and take momentum, and it’s disappointing.”

The Sharks have a long travel day Saturday. Analyst Drew Remenda said Saturday that they were up at 6 a.m. to fly to Vancouver. 

San Jose had a morning skate in Vancouver at 11:30 ahead of a 7 p.m. game. They will travel to Anaheim immediately afterward, having to clear customs twice in one day.

Plenty of challenges on and off the ice, to be sure, especially without having practiced as a group since Tuesday. But the Sharks are going to return to the playoffs this year, wins against bottom feeders are a crucial part of that equation.

The early part of LaBarbera’s Sunday shift is peacefully spent capturing, banding and releasing birds in what they call a “little oasis of trees.” But around 9:00 am every week, their team of volunteers hears a cacophony of car horns from I-880, less than half a mile to the east.

“You become really aware of the noise when you get away from it for a little bit,” said LaBarbera, a science director at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory.

The Bay Area is a permanent or temporary home for 250 different species of resident and migratory birds. Noise can affect their stress response, interfere with their ability to listen for predators and prey, and alter their vocalizations. But for conservationists striving to preserve the region’s threatened bird populations, disturbance from traffic, airplane and other noise is an unavoidable backdrop—and one that, until recently, has been little studied.

“I realized we knew hardly anything about how birds respond to noise pollution,” he says.

Scientists’ understanding of the impact of urban noise on birds advanced during the COVID-19 pandemic, however. When the Bay Area shut down in March 2020, researchers like Jennifer Phillips — then working with Francis through a National Science Foundation Fellowship — had been studying the songs of white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco and Richmond. They were able to record how the songs changed when the noise subsided. In a paper published in Science magazine, they reported that male sparrows sang more quietly and used lower frequencies when not having to compete with traffic noise.

But the pandemic’s muting of urban noise is long gone. And while the wetland birds of the South Bay don’t sing, they have to compete with urban sounds when they use vocalizations to communicate with each other and ward off predators.

The South Bay’s Salt Pond Restoration Project — the largest tidal restoration effort on the West Coast — provides habitat to the threatened Ridgway’s rail, an elusive species of bird that spends most of its time hiding in the tidal marsh where it nests. The project area also hosts about 10 percent of the population of endangered western snowy plovers. These tiny shorebirds now depend on the salt ponds and tidal flats — as well as on their normal habitat of sandy beaches — for nesting and foraging.

But the salt ponds are located directly under flight paths from Oakland Airport and Moffett Federal Airfield. Nearby highways and Union Pacific railroad tracks mean birds in the project area are constantly impacted by noise from planes, trains and automobiles.

Chronic noise “shrinks an animal’s perpetual word,” Francis said. When noise increases, the distance over which birds can hear sounds reduces.

While the effect of noise on rail species has not been studied directly, they vocalize at fairly low frequencies, which transportation noise tends to drown out.

Plovers, on the other hand, may be more sensitive to sudden noises. A large truck zooming by an otherwise quiet area, a barking dog or a cellphone ringing can create the illusion of a threat, causing birds to react.

“Episodic or intermittent noise is, I think, a bigger deal for wildlife than something steady or constant like highway noise or a data center or whatever else,” said Dave Halsing, project manager of the Salt Pond Restoration Project.

Francis recalls baby plovers on the Oceano Dunes near Pismo Beach on the Central Coast spending their nights darting away from their habitats, disturbed by off-road vehicles. The inexperienced chicks interpret the noise as an immediate threat and expend energy trying to evade it.

Still, Bay Area ornithologists and bird lovers are preoccupied with addressing more immediate threats of habitat destruction from further development, which means noise pollution is a lower priority.

“In conservation, we’re usually worried about the absolute emergency situation,” LaBarbera said.

Urban noise isn’t going away, but small changes can make a difference. Francis points to the growing number of cities enacting leaf blower regulations, which while they are often aimed at curbing emissions also help to reduce noise pollution. Switching to electric vehicles, choosing tire materials that generate less road noise, and adopting quieter jet engines can all help.

Managers of the Salt Pond Restoration Project are doing their part, taking steps to reduce noise in their own construction work when making trails or fortifying levees to reduce flood risk. They try to use less intrusive construction equipment, such as vibratory pile drivers. Halsing said the project is also required to implement buffer zones of several hundred feet between their construction work and certain species, including rails.

It’s a time-honored practice in conservation: Working for wildlife, while keeping one’s distance.

For three days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Valera in the metal-clad room on the sixth floor above the courtroom, according to a declaration he submitted to a judge. There were no beds, and the lights remained on at all hours. Detainees were forced to share a single toilet against the wall.

“They treated us like animals,” the 47-year-old Peruvian man told Bay Area News Group.

On Christmas Eve, five months after Velera’s arrest, a federal judge in San Jose temporarily barred ICE from making arrests at immigration courts across Northern California. Bay Area immigration advocates sued to halt the arrests, which they argue force those seeking refuge in the United States to choose between skipping their court dates, thereby increasing their chances of deportation, or attending the proceedings and risking detention.

“This ruling is a critical step in ensuring that immigrants can safely pursue their immigration cases without fear of arrest,” Jordan Wells, an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts applies to ICE’s San Francisco area of responsibility, encompassing Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield, and Hawaii. Pitts found advocates raised credible claims that the arrests have a chilling effect on court attendance and undermine the immigration court system. 

He ordered the ruling remain in place until a final judgment is entered in the case. It’s unclear when the lawsuit could be resolved.

This year, there have been at least 75 documented immigration court arrests in San Francisco, including Valera, and at least 39 in Sacramento, advocates said in an October court filing. It was unclear how many people have been arrested at the Bay Area’s other immigration court in Concord.

Attorneys for ICE argue that a January directive allowing the courthouse arrests nationwide is legal “operational guidance” authorized by the Trump administration. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

Under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, ICE arrests have surged, often topping 1,000 a day, according to data from UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. About a third of those arrested this year had no criminal record, according to analyses of the data by NPR and other news organizations.

“We are making America safe again and putting the American people first,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement earlier this month. “We have secured the border, taken the fight to cartels, and arrested thousands upon thousands of criminal illegal aliens.”

Valera, who has asked a court to grant him asylum, came to the United States three years ago, leaving behind his wife and young sons after fleeing criminal groups that he says threatened his life in his home country. Valera said he obtained a work permit and that he has cooperated with immigration officials while applying for asylum to remain in the U.S.

But after walking out of his immigration hearing on July 25, ICE immediately apprehended him. Soon after being taken to the holding cell, Valera said he began to feel half of his body going numb. Handcuffed to a stretcher, he spent the next day under observation at a hospital in San Francisco.

After being taken back to the cell, Valera said he received only small burritos and a chocolate bar at each meal. He and other detainees did their best to keep the area clean, but a small trash can in the corner quickly overflowed. The air conditioning ran constantly, and the men slept huddled together in the cell.

“They made us sleep on the floor in handcuffs,” Valera said.

Now, agents overseeing the San Francisco cells must provide detainees beds, clean clothes, basic hygiene products, medically necessary diets and to dim lights during sleeping hours, among other requirements, following a November injunction secured by advocates in the courthouse arrest case. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the cell conditions. But government attorneys told the court the agency is complying with the injunction.

From San Francisco, Valera was transferred to a holding cell in Oakland before being flown to a larger detention facility in Arizona. A judge ordered his release about a week later, determining he had been unlawfully detained, attorneys said.

Valera was dropped off at a bus station and used his own money to buy a ticket back to San Francisco for the next day. He booked a motel room, where he took his first shower since his arrest about two weeks earlier.

Despite the ordeal, Valera, who currently rents a space in a home in Daly City, said he plans to continue his asylum case in hopes of making a better life for himself in the U.S. He wants to one day bring his family to join him.

“There are people who have gone through things that are far worse than what I went through, and I don’t wish that on anybody,” he said. “It’s very traumatic, to be honest, and I hope one day this all ends, that it goes back to normal, and that they don’t treat us that way. You come to work, not to commit crimes.”

Borello Asset Management had initially submitted an application under the Builder’s Remedy process in 2023, aiming to transform the .72-acre lot at 1000 S. De Anza Blvd. into a seven-story, 118-unit complex. To make way for the housing project, the developer will demolish a 2,658-square-foot commercial building that was once home to Mori Kitchen, which closed in 2023.

“The current use of the property — a single-story commercial building currently vacant, surrounded by a sea of paved parking — (is) an inefficient use of land that does not benefit anybody,” said Erik Schoennauer, a land-use consultant representing the developer. “Redeveloping the property makes sense for the neighborhood and for the city. The proposed multi-family apartment building is consistent with the pattern of development throughout the city’s urban village areas and along the major commercial corridors.”

Borello had submitted its preliminary development application in June 2023, when the city’s housing element was still not in compliance with state requirements.

This allowed the developer to take advantage of the Builder’s Remedy process, which locks in any policies, ordinances, fees, and standards in effect at the time the application was submitted. It also forced city staff to evaluate the project as if it met the General Plan land-use designation and the zoning district’s requirements. The only way a local government could reject an eligible Builder’s Remedy project was if it could show a specific, adverse impact on public health and safety.

City project manager Alec Atienza said the project site was in a zoning district that would not allow housing unless it was 100% deed-restricted, affordable, or the applicant used another state law to allow development.

The complex will include 44 studios, 42 one-bedroom apartments and 32 two-bedroom apartments.

Twenty-four of the units will be available at 80% of the area’s median income. In 2025, the area median income for a single person was $136,650.

An environmental impact report completed in the summer estimated that construction could begin in early 2026, with the project taking about 14 months to complete.

The project received some pushback from residents, who expressed concerns about construction noise and vibration affecting nearby homes.

“If the ground sinks or settles due to excessive vibrations or from the activity of lots of heavy equipment and machinery, the integrity of the post-tension slab at Ventana could be compromised, leading to potential catastrophic structural failures,” Ventana Place Homeowners Association President Becky Bender said. “The ramifications would not only endanger the lives of Ventana Place residents, but also result in astronomical, multi-million dollar repair costs that may not even fully restore the structure.”

Bender also requested, to no avail, that the developer scale down the project to fit the character of the existing neighborhood.

Schoennauer addressed the construction concerns, noting that the environmental report included requirements to limit noise impacts and stating that it was implausible that the construction vibrations would affect the townhome buildings.

While Borello’s project will stick out a little more than the existing buildings, Schoennauer said, the city’s General Plan intended for more intense use along commercial corridors in the long run.

“The city’s plan is that a street like De Anza will be all seven stories someday,” Schoennauer said. “That’s the plan adopted by the City Council for decades, so our project, just because it’s one of the earliest ones, is not out of place.”

San Jose police responded at about 3:43 a.m. to multiple reports of a shooting inside the business in the 800 block of South First Street. Officers found three adult men suffering from at least one gunshot wound each. All three were taken to local hospitals with life-threatening injuries, police said.

A fourth victim, an adult woman, later arrived at a local hospital with at least one gunshot wound, according to police.

Despite emergency medical treatment, one of the male victims died at the hospital. The remaining three victims — two men and one woman — are in stable condition and expected to survive.

The San Jose Police Department’s Homicide Unit is investigating the case, which marks the city’s 26th homicide this year. Police said the suspect fled the scene before officers arrived.

In a post on X, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan called on witnesses to come forward.

“What should have been a night of joy turned into tragedy. I’m thinking of the victims and their families, and wishing a full recovery to those injured,” Mahan wrote. “As our police officers and detectives investigate this shooting, we urge anyone with information to come forward so those responsible can be held accountable and our community kept safe.”

Authorities have not released information about a possible motive, the identities of the victims or suspect, or the circumstances leading up to the shooting. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner’s Office will release the identity of the deceased victim pending notification of next of kin.

Police are asking anyone who was present at the time of the shooting or who may have video evidence or other information about the suspect to contact the San Jose Police Department’s Homicide Unit at 4257@sanjoseca.gov, 4106@sanjoseca.gov or 4542@sanjoseca.gov, or by phone at 408-277-5283.

Anonymous tips can be submitted through the P3TIPS mobile app, by calling 408-947-STOP, or through Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers. Information leading to an arrest may be eligible for a cash reward.

What’s good for Riverside County is good for the whole state: After a pilot to automatically admit high school students into the California State University system in the Inland Empire county took off last fall, lawmakers this year passed a law to greenlight a similar program statewide next fall.

Leaders at the California State University last year launched the pilot to attract more students to the university system and to steer some to campuses that have been struggling with enrollment declines.

RELATED: Cal State East Bay receives $50 million donation from MacKenzie Scott

The pilot worked like this: University officials and high schools in Riverside County pored over student course completion and grade data to identify every county high school senior who was eligible for admission to the 10 of 22 Cal State campuses chosen for the pilot. Then the students received a brochure in the mail last fall before the Nov. 30 submission deadline, plus digital correspondence, telling them they were provisionally admitted as long as they submitted an application to one or more Cal State campuses, even those not in the pilot, and maintained their high school grades.

Starting next fall, all students in California will be eligible for the automatic admissions program, which will expand the roster of participating Cal State campuses to 16. Cal State will release more information on the program’s implementation in February, its website says.

In justifying the expanded program during a legislative hearing, bill author Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Democrat from Napa, said college should be as seamless a transition from high school as it is for students finishing one grade and advancing to the next. “It’s entirely an invention of us, the gap between 12th grade and college. … The same gap does not exist between elementary school and junior high or junior high and high school.”

The legislation, Senate Bill 640, passed without any opposition and was signed into law by the governor. The program doesn’t mean students can enter any major at the campuses they pick. Some majors may require students to show higher high school grades or tougher courses if those programs have fewer openings than student demand. For Californians, the standard minimum GPA for entry is 2.5 in a series of college-preperatory courses.

Students will also be free to apply to the six other over-enrolled Cal State campuses, though admission isn’t guaranteed. Those are Fullerton, Long Beach, Pomona, San Diego, San Jose and San Luis Obispo.

What the Riverside pilot did

High school counselors told CalMatters that the Riverside County pilot encouraged students who never considered attending a university to follow through with the automatic admissions process. Counselors also reached out to some students who were a class or two short of meeting the requirements for Cal State admission to take those, encouraging more students to apply to college who otherwise wouldn’t have. Younger students who were off the college-course taking track might be emboldened to enroll in those tougher high school courses knowing automatic admission is in the cards, the counselors said.

Silvia Morales, a senior at Heritage High School, a public Riverside County high school, got an automatic admissions letter last fall. “I was pretty set on going to community college and then transferring, because I felt like I wasn’t ready for the four-year commitment to a college,” she said. She eventually submitted her forms, encouraged by her high school counselor.

Following the Riverside pilot, Cal State campuses saw roughly 1,500 more applicants and 1,400 more admitted students in 2025 compared to 2024, though just 136 more students enrolled.

The data for Riverside County reviewed by CalMatters suggests that more applicants and admitted students through an automatic admissions policy doesn’t translate into more enrolled students. Colleges closely follow their “yield rates” — the percentage of admitted students who ultimately enroll. In 2024, the Cal State yield rate for Riverside County was about a third. But in 2025, it declined by a few percentage points, meaning a lower share of admitted students selected any Cal State campus.

This suggests that the system will have to work harder to convert admitted students into ones who actually enroll, said Iwunze Ugo, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, particularly with students who would not have applied were it not for the automatic admissions program.

Automatic admissions doesn’t mean automatic enrollment

While admission to a college overcomes a major hurdle to eventually enrolling, there are numerous steps necessary before students sit down for their first college course. Accepted students must submit additional grades, put down a deposit, complete registration forms and actually show up for the fall term. Students who were less engaged in the college-going culture are more likely to “melt” during the process between acceptance and enrollment, some studies show, though researchers say this can be reversed with additional outreach to students at risk of not enrolling.

And even with an automatic admissions program, students must still register online and complete the application, which many students under the Riverside pilot didn’t do. Cal State sent out more than 17,000 automatic admissions notices to students, and just under 12,000 formally applied to at least one Cal State campus. Those who didn’t apply may have chosen another option, such as the often more selective University of California, private campuses, community colleges, or no college at all.

“I think that’ll be incumbent on the CSU to pick up some of that slack and encourage students admitted through this path to go through the rest of the process and ultimately end up at a CSU campus,” Ugo said.

Cal State officials also recognize this. “Students who apply independently tend to have stronger self-directed interest, and therefore stronger intent to enroll,” said April Grommo, a senior Cal State official who oversees enrollment management. More direct engagement with students admitted through this program will be necessary, she said.

Some campuses with a recent history of declining enrollment got a tiny pick-up from the pilot. San Francisco State saw 311 more applications from Riverside County in 2025 than in 2024. That translated to 11 more enrolled students, a review of Cal State data shows.

A statewide program may steer more students to attend campuses with enrollment woes, even if the “yield rate” declines. That’s because if the rate of new students enrolling doesn’t rise as quickly as the number of students admitted, the yield rate drops.

Under the expanded statewide program, Grommo said the system anticipates “enrollment growth as well, but not necessarily at the same rate as applications and admits,” she added.

And as the economy shows signs of decay, the prospect of a college degree may compel more high schoolers on the fence to attend Cal State; System data show students from there earn a typical salary of $71,000 five years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree. Postsecondary enrollment tends to rise as the number of available jobs decreases, a social science phenomenon in which employers are more selective about who they hire, compelling many job-seekers to hit the books to show they’re more trained.

Of course, souring economies often result in less public funding for colleges as state budgets are beleaguered, which may lead to fewer professors and staff for a growing cadre of students. “But I think generally, having more students is not a problem,” Ugo said.

In online voting that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Wong finished with 82.9% of the votes. San Mateo soccer player Kayla Lichaa took second at 8.7%.

Congratulations to all the candidates for this week’s recognition.

Wong scored 16 points in Gunderson’s 45-32 win over Leadership.

To nominate an athlete for next week’s poll, email highschools@bayareanewsgroup.com by Monday at 11 a.m. Please include stats and team results.

Votes by email do not count. Only votes submitted through the online poll on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites will count.

Winners are announced each Friday on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites and in the print edition of the Mercury News and EB Times sports sections.

In online voting that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Clugage had 49.4% to finish ahead of Head-Royce basketball player Tua Montoya, who was second at 43.7%.

Congratulations to all the candidates for this week’s recognition.

Clugage scored 24 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in Mitty’s 62-55 win over the King’s Academy.

To nominate an athlete for next week’s poll, email highschools@bayareanewsgroup.com by Monday at 11 a.m. Please include stats and team results.

Votes by email do not count. Only votes submitted through the online poll on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites will count.

Winners are announced each Friday on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites and in the print edition of the Mercury News and East Bay Times sports sections.