Marleau scores late, Sharks beat Jets to win 6th straight (Jan 24, 2017)
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) San Jose coach Peter DeBoer got another opportunity to heap praise on veteran forward Patrick Marleau.
Marleau scored the tiebreaking goal with 4:33 left in the third period to lift the Sharks to a 4-3 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday night for their sixth straight win.
''He's a special player,'' DeBoer said of the 37-year-old Marleau. ''He's had an unbelievable career and he looks like he's still got a lot of gas in the tank.''
Marleau got the game-winner for the second straight night after he scored four goals in the third period of San Jose's 5-2 win over Colorado on Monday. His 17th goal of the season came off a pass across the front of the net from Ryan Carpenter, which Marleau shot into an open net.
''It's been going good,'' Marleau said. ''I think the main thing was we're getting the wins. That was a great play by Carpenter to get me the puck.''
After a review, a no-goal call on Winnipeg with 17 seconds remaining was upheld because the referee intended to blow his whistle to call the play dead.
''I thought it was under me,'' San Jose goalie Aaron Dell said of the puck. ''I couldn't really tell. Either way I got pushed all the way into the net so I'm thinking that's the right call there.''
Brent Burns, Logan Couture and Melker Karlsson also scored for the Sharks, and Aaron Dell stopped 31 shots in his ninth appearance of the season.
Bryan Little scored twice and Andrew Copp also scored for the Jets. Defensemen Dustin Byfuglien and Josh Morrissey each had two assists and Ondrej Pavelec had 22 saves.
Winnipeg rookie star Patrik Laine, returning to action after missing eight games with a concussion, assisted on Little's second goal for his 38th point of the season.
''First shift was just thinking about the game too much,'' Laine said. ''I just have to leave the thinking and just go out there and play.''
Little put the Jets ahead 3-2 at 4:00 of the third with his second goal of the game off a fortunate bounce. His shot off a rebound and the puck hit the crossbar, bounced off Dell's back and trickled across the line.
With the Sharks short-handed because of a tripping penalty, Karlsson was checked from behind by Jets defenseman Jacob Trouba and got a penalty shot. He made it count, sending the puck over Pavelec's glove to tie it 3-3 at 9:37.
Little called the penalty shot ''a turning point in the third'' but he wasn't blaming Trouba.
''It was a great defensive play and a play that happens often,'' Little said. ''I mean, what can you do. He called it a penalty shot and you can't change it now. I had no problem with the play. It was a great defensive play.''
The Sharks took a 1-0 lead as Burns scored his 21st goal of the season 53 seconds into a two-man advantage at 3:59 of the first, after the Jets were dinged for slashing and then too many men on the ice.
Morrissey set up Winnipeg's tying goal with a long lead pass to Little, who got away from Sharks defenseman Joel Ward and put a low shot by Dell at 8:02.
San Jose went back ahead 27 seconds into the second after Couture redirected a pass from Mikkel Boedker for his 16th of the season. Couture has six points in his last four games, including two goals.
After the Jets had a goal waved off, Copp scored with a high slap shot with 1:59 left in the middle period to tie it at 2-2.
UP NEXT
Sharks: At Edmonton onThursday night.
Jets: At Chicago on Thursday night.
