The Blues imposed their will on the Sharks, who left the series battered and bruised.
The Sharks played an elimination game without forwards Joe Pavelski and Tomas Hertl and defenseman Erik Karlsson, who was targeted by Blues forwards throughout the series each time he touched the puck,
Karlsson, who had lingering groin and leg issues for 27 of the Sharks' final 33 regular-season games, did not play the third period of Game 5 and never saw a shift in the series again. Hertl also missed the third period of Game 5 after he was inadvertently clipped by Blues center Ivan Barbashev. Pavelski departed in the third period of Game 5 after getting checked by Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo.
The Blues were effective on the forecheck, totaling 208 hits (34.7 per game), and wanted to punish Sharks defensemen, particularly Brent Burns.
"I think whenever you're in a series that's as long as best-of-7, I think that's the plan," Blues center Tyler Bozak said. "You want to get in on the forecheck, you want to hit guys as much as you can, spend as much time in the offensive zone as possible and wear them down. They've got a couple 'D' that play a ton of minutes, so those are guys that we want to make play defense as much as possible and hit them every chance we get. As the series goes on, you hope you're wearing them out. Everyone is in such good shape and played all year. It's hard to wear guys down and every little thing can help for the later games in the series."