In a game featuring dreadful puck control, the San Jose Sharks overcame a four-goal push from the Nashville Predators to win 5-4 Tuesday night.
San Jose raced out to a 3-0 lead in the first period on goals from Joe Pavelski, Marcus Sorensen and Antti Suomela.
But the Predators finally found their game as the Sharks started throwing errant passes around the ice.
Filip Forsberg struck for two goals and Craig Smith and Rocco Grimaldi also scored in the four-goal outburst that erased the deficit and took the lead for Nashville.
“The first period, there’s nothing that can be said,” Grimaldi said. “It was abysmal. Juuse was fighting by himself. If not for him we’d really be down. He saved us. We wanted to fight back. The first period is not acceptable for a team of our caliber against a middle-of-the-pack team.
“The first period came back to bite us. No matter what happens we believe we can come back.”
Martin Jones made 30 saves to get the win and settled down after the rush.
Pavelski scored his second of the game to tie at 4-4 and the Joe Thornton scored his 400th career NHL goal to give the Sharks a 5-4 lead they would hold.
“Marcus (Sorensen) made a great play,” said Thornton, who centered the third line. “I love playing with him. It seems like we’ve got some chemistry together now. What a play by him. I had to finish it.”
His goal came just 13 seconds after Pavelski tied it.
“It was awesome,” Pavelski said. “That’s all we need to talk about tonight. That was a big goal for us. You can see him really finding his game, getting up to speed. That only comes with playing games. He’s found the puck in that spot a few times now and he’s made some big shots for us. Tonight was an awesome one to see go in.”
[WATCH: All Predators vs. Sharks highlights]
Juuse Saros made 32 saves in taking the loss.
“It was a bad start. That’s the only way to describe it. We gave them everything they got. In the second period we did to them what they did to us. It’s unacceptable how we started,” the Predators Craig Smith said of the 3-0 deficit the Preds found themselves in in the first period.
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