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Sharks top Predators behind Cheechoo, Thornton

Dec 10, 2006 - 6:24 AM SAN JOSE, California (Ticker) -- Jonathan Cheechoo and Joe Thornton made sure the San Jose Sharks did not let their skid continue.

Cheechoo scored two goals and Thornton added two assists as the Sharks downed the Nashville Predators, 3-1, to snap a brief two-game losing streak.

Curtis Brown scored the other goal and Evgeni Nabokov made 20 saves for San Jose, which has not lost more than two in a row this season and improved to 7-2-0 in games following a setback.

"Obviously we didn't play well Thursday night, and we talked about that before the game," Thornton said. "We wanted to come out and have a strong start and play hard for 60 minutes, and I thought we did a pretty good job of that tonight."

"I thought we executed a very good game plan," Nashville coach Barry Trotz said. "We were in a 2-1 hockey game. They only had about 15 shots with about six minutes to go in the game. And then we took three penalties, last six minutes of the game. I don't know if we had a chance to tie it up. It shortened the game for us right then."

After setting up Brown's tally that opened the scoring, Cheechoo doubled San Jose's lead with less than 3 1/2 minutes to go in the first period. The reigning Maurice Richard Trophy winner one-timed a pass from Thornton during a 2-on-1 rush past goaltender Chris Mason for his ninth goal.

"It was a nice play on a 2-on-1 by Joe, where he makes those passes look easy, and they aren't," Cheechoo said. "He made a nice pass that landed right on my stick for a good shot."

Cheechoo's second goal came with 3:31 left in the third period and gave the Sharks a 3-1 lead when he took a pass from Thornton and beat Mason.

"The second one, he (Thornton) just kind of flipped it out into the slot, where I was kind of hanging around," Cheechoo said. "He knew I was there."

Josef Vacisek scored the lone tally and Mason stopped 23 shots for the Predators, who concluded a 1-3-0 road trip.

The center tallied when he took a backhand pass from Martin Erat and blasted a shot from the faceoff circle over Nabokov's glove to slice San Jose's lead to 2-1 at 14:09 of the second period.

Erat had three assists in a 4-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday.

Nashville, which went 3-for-8 in Thursday's win, failed to convert in five opportunities with the extra skater against the Sharks.

"Oh, yeah, our penalty killing did a great job," San Jose coach Ron Wilson said. "Especially limiting the shots on goal. We blocked a ton of shots and kept them on the perimeter. They only had a couple of one-timers that are huge to their power play, when they kind of run a 1-3-1, and they come with shots off the flank.

"We did a really good job of denying them those opportunities by getting in the shooting lanes. Our forwards did a great job."

The Predators, 12-7-0 on the road this season, now go home for three games.

"It's going to be good to go home, it's not going to be easy," Nashville's Scott Nichol said. "There's no Washington Generals in this league. We got a lot of good teams coming in, and just because we had a good home record last year doesn't mean it's a guaranteed win this year."