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Sharks-Blue Jackets Preview

Nov 3, 2009 - 10:54 PM By SANTOSH VENKATARAMAN STATS Senior Writer

San Jose (10-4-1) at Columbus (7-5-1), 7:00 p.m. EDT

The San Jose Sharks had eight players score goals last weekend as they earned two victories and stretched their winning streak to five.

They'll try to showcase that balance again Wednesday night when they face the Columbus Blue Jackets in the second game of their three-game road trip.

San Jose (10-4-1) beat Colorado 3-1 on Friday before opening its trip with a 5-1 victory over Carolina on Sunday. Patrick Marleau recorded his team-high 11th goal after defensemen Kent Huskins and Douglas Murray each scored their first.

"I think that's a part of our team," Huskins said. "All of our defensemen can kind of get up in the rush and make it an odd-man rush. If we can chip in goals, that's great."

The Sharks scored 18 goals during their five consecutive victories. Marleau had four goals and six assists in that span while Dany Heatley added three and two.

Evgeni Nabokov won four starts in a row with a 1.47 goals-against average in that stretch for San Jose, which faces Detroit on Thursday. Nabokov is 17-4-2 with a 1.80 GAA against Columbus (7-5-1).

"We're playing better and better each night and doing the things we need to do to win," Murray said. "We played very sloppy in the beginning of the year. We got wins because (Nabokov) stood on his head. We obviously have a lot of talent on this team and we were explosive and scored four or five goals here or there. I didn't think we played very good hockey at all.

"We've started to play better. We can certainly play better, but we're playing better now."

Heatley had three goals and an assist in a 6-3 home victory over Columbus on Oct. 8. The Sharks went 6-0-2 in their last eight meetings with the Blue Jackets.

Columbus lost its last two home games, but rallied for a 5-4 overtime win at Washington on Sunday. Raffi Torres tied the game twice in the third period and R.J. Umberger scored on the power play in the extra session.

"He stepped up for sure," Columbus forward Rick Nash said of Torres. "That first one was huge. Good battle down low, good wrap-around."

Nash had a goal and an assist to bring his point total to nine in his last five games. The Blue Jackets captain, though, wants to see more from his team, which reached the playoffs for the first time last season.

"It's a big win, but we've still got a lot of work to do," Nash said. "When we play on the road, we can't be taking too many penalties. We made some defensive errors when the game was tied. Just got to sharpen up those areas."