Sharks 8, Flames 0

The San Jose Sharks spread the wealth, and the Calgary Flames spread the blame.

San Jose reversed its trend of starting slowly by scoring two goals in the first five minutes and four goals in the first period en route to an 8-0 rout of the Flames on Monday night.

The Sharks, who surrendered the first goal in 11 of their previous 14 games, got two quick goals from Patrick Marleau and chased Calgary goalie Mike Vernon in the first period.

"We haven't been playing very well in the first period, but tonight we came out and really focused on it, and if we continue to do that, it will make for some easier games than trying to come back in the third period all the time," said Marleau, who scored at 1:48 and 4:51 of the first.

Calgary's setback, its most lopsided shutout loss since an 11-0 defeat to Vancouver on March 1, 1992, had coach Don Hay seething.

"It was an embarrassing effort by everybody on our hockey team, and it's very disappointing," Hay said. "We need better preparation, better emotion and better intensity."

San Jose goalie Evgeni Nabokov made 21 saves for his second shutout of the season.

Jeff Friesen, Tony Granato, Gary Suter, Alexander Korulyuk and Marco Sturm also scored for San Jose, which opened a three-point lead atop the Pacific Division over Phoenix and Dallas.

"It was good to have a good solid game, and to spread the scoring around the way we did makes everybody happy," said Marleau, who has 12 goals.

THRASHERS 5, BRUINS 4: Chris Tamer scored his first goal of the season with 1:01 left in the third period as Atlanta earned a franchise-record third consecutive win.

Ray Ferraro had his ninth career hat trick, Steve Guolla scored in his third straight game and Donald Audette had three assists for the host Thrashers.

Sergei Samsonov scored two goals in a 2:25 span for Boston and tied the game at 4 with 3:48 to play.

PANTHERS 4, MAPLE LEAFS 4: Dmitri Yushkevich scored a game-tying goal with 49 seconds left in regulation to rally host Toronto.

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Tie Domi scored his ninth goal of the season and seventh in his last seven games for the Leafs. Yanic Perreault and Darcy Tucker also scored for Toronto.

Igor Larionov, Viktor Kozlov, Pavel Bure and Robert Svehla scored for Florida.

CANUCKS 6, PREDATORS 3: Markus Naslund scored two goals as Vancouver won for the third time in four games.

Peter Schaefer, Harold Druken, Matt Cooke and Trent Klatt also scored for the Canucks. Greg Johnson, Cliff Ronning and David Legwand scored for visiting Nashville.

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