ATLANTA (Ticker) -- By ending his own drought, Shawn McEachern helped the Atlanta Thrashers end their longest losing streak in the Bob Hartley era.
McEachern collected two assists before scoring his first goal in more than 11 months as the Thrashers snapped a season-high three-game slide with a 5-2 victory over the Florida Panthers.
A two-time 30-goal scorer, McEachern began his second season in Atlanta without a goal in his first 18 games. He had not scored since January 13, which was the Thrashers' final game with general manager Don Waddell behind the bench. But Atlanta's captain played just three games under Hartley before going down with an assortment of injuries.
McEachern led the team with 11 assists and got two more by setting up tallies by rookie Francis Lessard and Vyacheslav Kozlov as the Thrashers took a 2-0 lead after two periods.
But the lead disappeared in a 41-second span early in the third as Niklas Hagman and Vaclav Nedorost tallied for Florida.
"You'd like to have little better start than we had tonight," said Florida interim coach Rick Dudley, who fell to 2-2-0 since firing Mike Keenan. "But on the flip side of that coin, we responded pretty well."
Atlanta regained the lead when rookie Tommi Santala streaked through the slot and swept Ronald Petrovicky's feed past goaltender Steve Shields for his first NHL goal at 6:15.
"We got up 2-0 and then had a bad five minutes in the third period where we let them back in the game," Hartley said. "But we stayed composed and we were right back in the game. It's a good two points for us."
Pasi Nurminen made 20 of his 26 saves over the final 40 minutes and McEachern teamed with Petrovicky to give the Thrashers some breathing room.
"It was good to get it," McEachern said. "Petro made a great play. Other guys have made great plays for me this season, I just needed to put it in."
Defenseman Daniel Tjarnqvist capped the scoring with 3:41 left as Atlanta moved to 8-7-3-1.
"It's pretty big," McEachern said. "It's just so tight right now. We were ahead by a lot there for a while, just with Tampa, and now everybody is catching up to us. We've been on the road for a while, so to come home and get a win, that's big."
