ST. LOUIS — Logan Couture broke a tie in the third period with his second goal of the game, and the San Jose Sharks defeated the St. Louis Blues 5-4 at Enterprise Center on Saturday.
Evander Kane had a goal and an assist, and Devan Dubnyk made 28 saves for his first win with the Sharks (7-7-2), who lost to the Blues 3-2 in overtime Thursday.
San Jose recovered after surrendering a three-goal lead.
“We had to control our emotions,” Sharks coach Bob Boughner said. “We stuck with it. We had some great character (penalty) kills out there, and we got three points out of this building and it could easily have been four.”
Jordan Kyrou had a goal and two assists, and Ryan O’Reilly and Brayden Schenn each had a goal and an assist for the Blues (10-6-2).
“We definitely scored enough to win the game, but too many mistakes defensively,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “We’ve just got to tighten that up. Got to be better.
“We had a couple turnovers, and they countered off of them. One was a goalie handle, and it was unfortunate, but just in general, a couple turnovers went in our net, and it’s stuff that we know what we’re supposed to do and know where we’re supposed to be. When you turn the puck over and you make the wrong play with the puck, people counter off of it, and they did a good job of that and they scored some goals.”
Couture scored unassisted to give San Jose a 5-4 lead at 11:51 when his shot from the right face-off circle went in off the back of goalie Jordan Binnington.
“I’m counted on to score goals and produce offensively,” Couture said. “I want to score and help our team. We had a lot of guys step up tonight. Different guys played well. The list goes on. We scored five goals. We’ve had a tough time scoring goals this season. When we play like that, we’ll find the back of the net.”
After Patrick Marleau gave the Sharks a 4-1 lead at 8:18 of the second period with his first goal of the season, the Blues scored three straight before the end of the period.
Zach Sanford made it 4-2 at 8:37 when he scored with a redirection of Torey Krug‘s high point shot.
O’Reilly got St. Louis within 4-3 at 15:30 when he scored on a delayed penalty, and Kyrou tied it 4-4 at 18:41 with a shot from the left circle on the rush.
“We did a great job coming back in the second, we had a lot of momentum going our way, and it’s tough,” Kyrou said. “We’ve just got to be a little more solid defensively. We can’t give up some of those goals.”
Rudolfs Balcers gave San Jose a 3-0 lead at 3:48 of the second with his first goal. Schenn scored 57 seconds later to make it 3-1 at 4:45.
Kane gave the Sharks a 1-0 lead at 7:24 of the first period with a wrist shot from the right circle when the puck came to him after Sanford’s pass went off Kevin Labanc.
Couture made it 2-0 at 10:10. Labanc intercepted Binnington’s pass after it took an odd bounce off the boards behind the net and centered it to Couture.
“We had a 4-1 lead,” Boughner said. “We’re a team that has to win these kinds of games. When you score five goals on the road, you don’t expect this much trouble. Everybody was pushing hard. We had to find a way to win and we did. I’m pretty proud of the guys. It’s easy to get rattled when you give up a three-goal lead. We just kept coming. We played a really good period.”
NOTES: Dubnyk lost his first four starts with the Sharks. He was acquired in a trade from the Minnesota Wild on Oct. 5. … San Jose forward Dylan Gambrell went into NHL concussion protocol and did not play in the third period. … Marleau has scored 563 goals and needs one to tie Mats Sundin and Joe Nieuwendyk for 23rd in NHL history. … Forward Sammy Blais became the first Blues player to miss a game due to NHL COVID-19 protocol.
