In St Louis, Jordan Binnington made 17 saves for his second shut out of the season and the Blues blanked the New Jersey Devils, 3-1, on Tuesday night.
“No. 1, it feels good to be back in the win column as a team,” Binnington said. “I think it’s important that we went through that and continued to believe in ourselves and grow and stick to the plan and just stay calm. It’s a great 60-minute game by us tonight. Hopefully we can continue that going forward.”
The Devils were on the ice after having been trimmed down by trades, with Blake Coleman and Andy Greene heading off to cleaner ice.
“They outplayed us. It’s a good team,” the Devils’ Kyle Palmieri said. “They’ve won a lot of games for a reason, and they had a game plan and they stuck with it. I thought the first 10 minutes of the game we’re moving, we’re quick with our decisions and making simple plays and got away from that, and a good team like that’s going to take advantage.
“We didn’t defend hard enough. We weren’t ending plays. Louie stood on his head for us and we didn’t give him much support.”
Ivan Barbashev struck twice for the Blues.
Jaden Schwartz added a single marker for the Blues.
“They’re Stanley Cup champs for a reason,” Devils coach Alain Nasreddine said. “It’s a lot of the returning guys so you have to give them credit. For us, it’s just too much at the end of the stick, and those 50-50 pucks where you got to use leverage and you got to use your body in this league, and we just didn’t win enough battles.”
[WATCH:Â All Devils vs. Blues highlights]
Louis Domingue made 36 saves in the loss.
“You look at Louis game, it was a really strong game,” the Devils’ Nico Hischier said. “He made some huge saves, so he kept us in the game for a long time and, obviously, as a team, you want to give him something back. Tonight we did not do that, but obviously Louis just played a great game.”
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