Four Sharks score in victory against Canucks

VANCOUVER -- Goaltender Martin Jones bought the San Jose Sharks enough time to find their game coming off a five-day break.
Jones made the best of his 35 saves early, Patrick Marleau scored the go-ahead goal with 56 seconds left in the second period, and Mikkel Boedker and Logan Couture scored 2:49 apart in the third to help the Sharks to a 4-1 win against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena on Saturday.

"We knew it would be a little messy, and it was, and Jones thankfully was our best player and gave us a chance to get our legs under us, and as the game wore on, we got better and better," San Jose coach Peter DeBoer said. "By the third, we were playing the way we can."
WATCH: All Sharks vs. Canucks highlights
Tomas Hertl scored for the Sharks (36-18-7), who are five points ahead of the Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks for first place in the Pacific Division. San Jose has won 10 straight games in Vancouver since its last loss on Jan. 21, 2012.
"We are hungry to get points when we come here," said Chris Tierney, who had two assists.
Daniel Sedin scored, and Ryan Miller made 22 saves for the Canucks, who also were coming off their five-day break.
Vancouver (26-29-6), which was missing five players because of the mumps, has three wins in its past 11 games and is nine points behind the St. Louis Blues for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.

"Overall, the effort was good," coach Willie Desjardins said. "Our young guys came up and played hard. The first two periods, we gave ourselves a real chance to win that game."
Vancouver was missing defensemen Chris Tanev, Nikita Tryamkin and Troy Stecher, and forwards Markus Granlund and Michael Chaput because of mumps or related symptoms, and defenseman Luca Sbisa left after the second period because of the flu.
The Canucks have been quarantining players with mumps symptoms, but Desjardins said that isn't the case with Sbisa.
"They said it's totally different symptoms," Desjardins said.
Hertl gave the Sharks a 1-0 lead at 3:31 of the second period, but Sedin tied it 1-1 at 12:02.
After Marleau made it 2-1 with 56 seconds left in the second period, Boedker scored his first goal in 20 games on a 2-on-1 at 11:31 of the third, and Couture scored on a power play at 14:20 to make it 4-1.
"Our line got better as the game went on, and the whole team got getter as the game went on," Boedker said. "It's always nice to put it in when you have a big chance like that."
Desjardins said Stecher and Tanev no longer are in quarantine.
"They're good to come back, but we'll have to get a read on where they're at," he said.
Stecher was the only of the five players with a confirmed case of the mumps.

Goal of the game

Tierney made a pass from the blue line to defenseman David Schlemko cutting to the backdoor on Miller's right, and he passed it back through the crease to Marleau below the goal line on the other side. Marleau jammed it into an empty net before Miller could get back across.

Save of the game

Bo Horvat sent Loui Eriksson in alone from the hash marks, but Jones threw out his blocker to make the save with 3:30 left in the first period.

Unsung performance of the game

Sharks forward Joel Ward was hobbled when he blocked a shot on the Canucks' first power play, but he blocked another before it was over, and two more before the game ended, matching Schlemko for most in the game.

Highlight of the game

A giveaway and a bad line change gave Ward a breakaway from the blue line. His deke trickled through Miller's legs and wide of the net, but Tierney centered back to Hertl in the crease for a tap-in into an open net.

They said it

"It's something about the Vancouver air and the Canadian air. I always feel good when I play here." -- Sharks forward Chris Tierney, who scored two goals in Vancouver on Feb. 2 and didn't have another point until he had two assists Saturday
"For a short lineup, they played hard, they played fast, they gave us some issues, so hats off to them for the effort." -- Sharks coach Peter DeBoer on the Canucks, who were missing five players because of the mumps
"We had a lot of pucks going to the net, gave us some zone time, gave us some control. Just unfortunate we couldn't find a little bit more." -- Canucks goaltender Ryan Miller

Need to know

Sharks forward Joe Thornton remains two assists shy of becoming the 13th player in NHL history with 1,000. … Canucks defenseman Even McEneny, an undrafted free agent signed in 2012, made his NHL debut.

What's next

Canucks: Host the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday (10 p.m. ET; SNP, FS-D, NHL.TV)
Sharks:Host the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday (10:30 p.m. ET; CSN-CA, SNO, NHL.TV)