The San Jose Sharks are now closer to the Stanley Cup Final than they have ever been in franchise history.

Thanks to their 3-0 win over the St. Louis Blues on Thursday night they now have 2-1 lead in the Western Conference finals. This is the first time the Sharks have ever held a series lead in a conference finals. In each of their previous three appearances (2004, '10 and '11) they lost the first two games and were never able to come back to take a series lead at any point. They lost the 2004 series to Calgary Flames in six games, were swept by the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 and lost to the Vancouver Canucks in 2011 in five games.

They not only have a lead on the Blues, they are now just two wins away from reaching the Stanley Cup Final for the first time.

Here are five takeaways from Thursday's win.

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Tomas Hertl scored two goals for the San Jose Sharks in their Game 3 win. USATSI

1. Tomas Hertl is outscoring the Blues in this series. That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

The Sharks' top line of Joe Thornton, Tomas Hertl and Joe Pavelski has been fantastic in this series and on Thursday Hertl scored two more goals to give him three in the series.

The St. Louis Blues, as a team, have only scored two goals, with both of them coming in their Game 1 win.

Here is a look at Hertl's first goal Thursday, which was an absolute rocket of a slap shot off of a perfect pass from Pavelski.

As for the Blues ... well ... they are not getting open looks like that. They are not getting shots like that. They are barely getting any shots at the moment.

Since Jori Lehtera scored the winning goal midway through the second period of Game 1, the Blues have been unable to beat Sharks goalie Martin Jones, getting shut out for more than 150 minutes and 58 consecutive shots.

Jones now has three shutouts in his past four games.

2. This is getting frustrating for the Blues. It's not just Jones that has been a problem for them.

The Sharks are just absolutely shutting the Blues down and not allowing them to create any kind of consistent pressure. The fact they only have 58 shots on goal in two-and-a-half games is a pretty telling sign that finding room to do anything has been difficult. On the rare occasion they do, Jones has been a wall in net or the Blues are simply unable to get a shot in the back of the net. Troy Brouwer, for example, hit the post twice in Game 2, and then after doing it again Game 3 on Thursday his frustration finally boiled over.

So he took it out on his hockey stick.

3. This Joe Thornton pass is amazing. We mentioned Hertl's goal scoring in this series and already looked at his first goal from Thursday, and here is a look at his second. While the first one was set up on a perfect pass by Pavelski, this goal was set up by an even more impressive pass from Thorton.

Good luck defending that. Simply one of the best playmakers the NHL has ever seen.

Thornton also assisted on Hertl's first goal of the game.

4. That goal forced Brian Elliott out of the game. Elliott has been fantastic for the Blues this postseason, but that Hertl goal is probably one he has to stop. After he didn't, Blues coach Ken Hitchcock replaced him with backup Jake Allen.

Even though the numbers did not end up being great for him Thursday, and for as much as that shot has to be stopped, it is really hard to put much of the blame for this game on Elliott. After all, his team scored zero goals for the second straight game and the first two Sharks goals came on odd-man rushes where wide-open players had all of the time and space in the world to get off perfect shots.

5. Logan Couture added to his playoff points lead. Couture picked up the assist on Joonas Donskoi's second-period goal that gave the Sharks a 2-0 lead and by doing so picked up his 20th point of the playoffs. He now has a two-point lead over teammate Brent Burns for the NHL's playoff scoring lead and now has more points than any other Sharks player has ever had in a single postseason.

The Sharks made it look easy on this goal.

Compared to the Eastern Conference finals series between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning, this series looks like it is being played in slow motion for most of the time. But every once in a while the Sharks come forward with a rush like that and just create a beautiful scoring chance and turn it into a goal.

Honestly, the Sharks have made a lot look easy over the past two games with both of them being every bit as one-sided as the 7-0 combined score would indicate. They are controlling the pace of the game during 5-on-5 play, have dominated on special teams, and are just completely shutting down everything the Blues want to try to do offensively.