Kiefer Sherwood scored two goals and Juuse Saros made 23 saves to lead the visiting Nashville Predators to their fourth straight win, 4-2, over the San Jose Sharks on Saturday night.
Gustav Nyquist and Filip Forsberg each had a goal and an assist for Nashville, which moved two points ahead of both St. Louis and Minnesota for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference. It was Nashville’s ninth consecutive win over the Sharks.
Mikael Granlund and Filip Zadina scored and Kaapo Kahkonen stopped 31 of 34 shots for San Jose, which suffered its third straight loss.
Nashville took a 1-0 lead at the 10:14 mark of the first period when Sherwood, left alone by the right side of the net, roofed a Michael McCarron pass from the left corner.
The Predators made it 2-0 late in the second period on a power-play goal by Forsberg who ripped a wrist shot from the right point through heavy traffic and inside the left post for his 27th goal. It was also the 567th point of Forberg’s career, moving him past David Legwand (566) into second place for most points in Predators franchise history.
Granlund cut the Nashville lead to 2-1 at the 1:10 mark of the third period with his seventh goal, beating Saros with a wrist shot from the bottom of the right circle. It snapped a six-period goalless streak for the Sharks.
Sherwood extended the lead to 3-1 a couple of minutes later when he finished a tw-on-one break with a wrist shot from the right circle past Kahkonen’s blocker side for his seventh goal of the season.
Zadina made it 3-2 midway through the period with a backdoor rebound of a Jan Rutta wraparound try.
San Jose pulled Kahkonen for an extra attacker with a little over a minute to go and Nyquist sealed the win for the Predators with an empty-netter with 11.6 seconds remaining.
–Field Level Media