In San Jose, the Sharks surrendered the opening goal to the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins and then reeled off four straight goals en rout to a 5-2 Tuesday night.
Tomas Hertl picked up a hat truck in the win.
“We showed again our best game, all 20 guys with Jonesy,” Hertl said. “We’re just playing our game now. That’s why we’re having the winning streak. I’m so happy for everyone on the ice because we’re winning. That’s most important. That’s a lot of fun. It’s not about who scores, it’s about if we win the game or not.”
Tomas Hertl had hat trick in win over Pens Tuesday – File photo by Jack Lima
Joe Thornton also scored; it was his 1,000th NHL career game.
“It’s just the balanced scoring,” Thornton said. “It seems like a lot of guys are going at the same time. I credit a lot of that to great defense, too. The defense is giving the pucks to forwards and they can go. The team is playing real well right now.”
Martin Jones made 22 saves to get the win.
“I thought that was as complete a game as we’ve played all year. I thought our defense was solid, Jonesy was solid, special teams. And we did get contributions from all four lines. I really thought, especially the second period, we really set the game up for ourselves with how well we played,” Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer said after the win.
Kris Letang and Derick Brassard scored for the Pens as they dropped to 25-15-6.
“We didn’t play well tonight, obviously,” Phil Kessel said. “They outdid us in every zone. Obviously we didn’t do the little things right. They got to our net a lot. They got some rebound goals. Offensively, we didn’t create enough opportunities for our guys.”
Marcus Sorensen also scored for the Sharks who improved to 28-13-7.
“We’re a confident group” Evander Kane (three assists) said. “We feel if we show up to play and play our best game we have a good chance to win every night. We’re confident in that. This is how you continue to climb in the standings. You put wins together consecutively. We need to continue to do that because it’s real tight right now.”
[WATCH: All Penguins vs. Sharks highlights]
“They brought their ‘A’ game tonight. They were really good. They’re one of the better teams we’ve played this season. They outplayed us all over the rink. We weren’t good enough and I know we are better than that. We didn’t execute tonight. We lost a lot of puck battles. They won the battles in front of the nets,” Pens head coach Mike Sullivan said.
Matt Murray made 24 saves in the loss.
“They were on their game tonight,” Murray said. “We have to give them some credit, they really outplayed us all game, especially having players in front of the net. I think they just outplayed us, we didn’t go hard enough at the net fronts. That’s a pretty good team over there.”
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