All the ORD-SFO flights I listed work (1625, 1800, 2000) as they land before 2300. The Cathay flight SFO-HKG departs at 0100. Just the question of availability. If there's no seats, you can't very well "insist" you be given a couple of them because of a misconnect. I probably would have elected to just go out the next day if there were no seats in that direction.