Hockey: San Jose wins eighth straight

SAN JOSE - Patrick Marleau scored his 27th goal of the season and Dany Heatley added his 24th to lead the San Jose Sharks to their eighth straight victory, 4-1 over the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night.

The Sharks also got production from two less obvious sources in Jamie McGinn and Douglas Murray as they extended their longest winning streak of the season and maintained the points lead in the NHL.

Robert Nilsson scored the only goal for Edmonton, which has lost nine of 10. Two days after coach Pat Quinn called his team "dumb" following a loss in Calgary, the struggling Oilers were no match for the NHL's top team. Even Edmonton's goal was actually scored by the Sharks. Evgeni Nabokov cleared a rebound and the puck deflected off teammate Joe Pavelski and past Nabokov for a goal that was credited to Nilsson.

San Jose did more than enough scoring at the other end to make up for that one mistake.

In the past 21/2 weeks, the Sharks have won all eight games they played and had eight of their players picked for the upcoming Olympics in Vancouver. The eight Olympians matches Anaheim for the most of any NHL team and the Sharks are playing up to that level of late.

After getting goals from their bottom two lines in the first period, the Sharks' big guns took over in the second. Heatley struck first, beating Jeff Deslauriers on a wraparound in the opening minute of the period to make it 3-0. Marleau restored the three-goal lead when he took a pass from Joe Thornton during a 4-on-4 and skated in from the blue line and beat Deslauriers with a wrist shot.Marleau trails Marian Gaborik of the New York Rangers by one for the league lead in goals.

San Jose's first two goals came on shots from the point. McGinn tipped in a shot from Kent Huskins to get the Sharks on the board with his seventh goal. Murray then beat Deslauriers with a blast from the point late in the period to make it 2-0 on his second goal of the season.

Nabokov made 22 saves for the Sharks. He wasn't tested much, but did rob Gilbert Brule with a glove save in the final minute of the second period.