ST. LOUIS (AP) With five goals and two assists in his last four games www.islandersfanproshop.com , Mikkel Boedker is on quite a tear at an opportune time.Boedker and Logan Couture each had a goal and an assist, sending the San Jose Sharks to a 3-2 victory over the slumping St. Louis Blues on Tuesday night.”When you’re on a roll, the puck seems to find you a little bit,” Boedker said. ”It feels really good. Obviously, it’s a good time of the year to be productive.”Article continues below ...Joonas Donskoi also scored and Martin Jones made 30 saves for San Jose, which has won five of its last six games.”He was money tonight,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said about Jones. ”I think the story of the game was that Jonesey was big at the right times and we capitalized on some of the mistakes they made.”Ivan Barbashev and Vladimir Tarasenko had the goals for the Blues, who have lost a season-high four straight.St. Louis coach Mike Yeo was not happy with his team’s performance.”I didn’t think we played well,” Yeo said. ”Desperation time was a while ago. This is where pride has to come in. We have to make sure we stop the bleeding and we have to start building confidence in the game that we’re playing.”We can’t accept the fact that we’re playing good and not winning hockey games. We need points. We need wins and we need to start doing it now.”After a scoreless first period, the teams combined for five goals in the second.San Jose took a 1-0 lead when Couture knocked in a loose puck at 6:35. Boedker fired in a shot from the point that goalie Carter Hutton blocked but couldn’t corral. Couture was on the spot and scored his 24th of the season.”It’s been a good year so far offensively,” Couture said. ”I think I’ve capitalized on the chances I’ve had. Tonight was a nice one to get the puck on my stick and have a wide-open net. Hopefully I can continue it.”St. Louis answered at 8:23 when Barbashev scored on a wrist shot from the top of the right circle that sailed over Jones’ arm.Donskoi beat Hutton on a wrist shot from the left circle at 12:05. Couture assisted on Donskoi’s first goal in 17 games.Boedker gave San Jose a 3-1 lead at 15:54 when he scored from the left side of the net.”It was just a matter of putting it home,” he said.Tarasenko cut the margin to 3-2 on a power play when he fired in the rebound of a shot by Vince Dunn at 19:36 for his 24th of the season. Tarasenko has 10 points in his last nine games (four goals, six assists) against the Sharks.Despite the late goal New York Islanders T-Shirts Womens , it was not a good period for the Blues.”They were just better than us in the second period,” Yeo said. ”We were sloppy. I thought we were drifting all over the place.”San Jose’s Brent Burns prevented a goal with less than five minutes left. During a scramble in front of the net, the puck hit the post and was sliding along the goal line when Burns knocked it out.”You work for your own luck,” Yeo said. ”You earn your luck. We just dug ourselves too big a hole against a good defensive team.”This was the first meeting between St. Louis and San Jose this season. The Blues swept the three-game season series last year, outscoring the Sharks 11-3 overall, and had won four straight against the Sharks.Hutton made his second start in the last five games and stopped 20 shots. Previously against the Sharks, he was 4-0-1 with a 0.98 goals-against average, a .968 save percentage and two shutouts in five career starts.”I think the time for moral victories has come and gone,” Hutton said. ”We’ve got to win hockey games and get points.”Blues defenseman Colton Parayko agreed.”We’ve got 21 games left and there’s a lot of points left out there on the board,” Parayko said. ”We have a group that can win and we’re looking forward to the stretch.”NOTES: The Sharks acquired C Eric Fehr from Toronto for a seventh-round pick in the 2020 draft. … Blues C Vladimir Sobotka was out of the lineup with an illness. It was the first game he has missed this season. … The Blues have recalled forward Sammy Blais from the AHL for the fourth time this season. Blais, who leads the San Antonio Rampage with 28 points (11 goals, 17 assists), last played for St. Louis on Dec. 16 New York Islanders Hoodies Womens , when he got hurt against Winnipeg. … San Jose forward Tomas Hertl missed another game with an upper-body injury.UP NEXTSharks: At the Nashville Predators on Thursday.Blues: Host the Winnipeg Jets on Friday.— WASHINGTON (AP) Throughout their first three playoff series, the Vegas Golden Knights were defined by smart decisions and dazzling plays.In the Stanley Cup Final, their mistakes have drawn most of the attention.Vegas made too many errors in its own end of the ice and scored just one gift-wrapped goal Saturday night in a 3-1 loss to the Washington Capitals, who never trailed in taking a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 series.There were missed assignments, botched passes and only 22 shots on goal. The Golden Knights hardly looked like the team that steamrolled its way to the Western Conference championship with a 12-3 record.After opening the Final with a 6-4 victory, Vegas lost Game 2 when Alex Tuch failed to convert a wonderful scoring chance in the waning minutes. There was more trouble coming as the series arrived in Washington.On Saturday night, after the Golden Knights closed to 2-1 early in the third period, the Capitals restored the two-goal cushion when Jay Beagle outworked Vegas defenseman Shea Theodore in the corner, gained possession of the puck and sent a centering pass that Devante Smith-Pelly slammed into the net at 13:53.”It didn’t go his way tonight,” left wing David Perron said of Theodore. ”You just have to move forward and turn the page.”Ditto for the rest of the Golden Knights, who now trail in a playoff series after three games for the first time.”It’s all on us right now,” Deryk Engelland said. ”We’ve just got to tighten it up and get going on the ice.”After becoming only the third NHL team to win multiple playoff series in its inaugural season, Vegas charged into the Final looking to extend its unprecedented run of success.It started well in Game 1 New York Islanders Hats Womens , and there seemed no reason to panic after the subsequent 3-2 defeat. But the Golden Knights’ downturn continued Saturday night, when they too often let goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury contend for himself and failed to mount much of a threat against Braden Holtby on the other end.In one telling sequence, Alex Ovechkin opened the scoring early in the second period as he was falling over Vegas defenseman Brayden McNabb. It happened only after Fleury slid from side to side, frantically making three saves in the sequence before Ovechkin connected.”It’s a team game,” said Fleury, who had 23 saves. ”I just try to do my job the best I can.”Vegas has lost two straight for the first time since early April, when it dropped the final two meaningless games of the regular season. The Golden Knights are struggling on both ends of the ice, and at this point they can’t explain why.”We didn’t play good in the neutral zone, turned a lot of pucks over and fed their offense,” said Tomas Nosek, who scored Vegas’ only goal. ”Also, the back-check was not good enough.”Vegas still has a chance to become the first expansion team to win the Stanley Cup. But when the Final is tied at one game apiece, the winner of Game 3 ultimately has gone on to capture the Cup 78 percent of the time (21 of 27) since the series went to the best-of-seven format in 1939.The only deficit the Golden Knights faced before this was in the Western Conference finals Custom New York Islanders Jerseys , when they lost the opener to Winnipeg before rattling off four straight wins.”Tonight it was a close hockey game,” coach Gerard Gallant said. ”It was 2-1 late in the (third) period, and then that unfortunate turnover goal.”To be fair, the Golden Knights’ goal came in similar fashion. After Holtby did a poor job of clearing the puck from behind the Capitals net, Nosek easily scored to slice Washington’s lead to 2-1 at 3:29 of the third period.But Vegas had already dug a hole that was too deep.”They came out in the first period and set the tone,” Gallant said. ”We were chasing them from behind again tonight.”That is the predicament Vegas now faces in the series, with Game 4 on Monday night.”We’ve got to find a way to bounce back and put this behind us,” Perron said.—More Stanley Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/tag/StanleyCupFinals