Blues defuse Bolts in OT

Well, well, well.  What have we got here in St Louis?

On Thursday night, the Blues defeated the Lighting in Tampa, 1-0, in overtime.

Brayden Schenn struck for the winner as the puck slid into the Bolts’ zone. He caught up with it and angled in from the left boards and wristed home the winner.

Brayden Schenn struck for the game-winner in OT in Tampa – file photo by Lewis Bleiman

“I [saw Nikita Kucherov] coming and the goalie cut off the angle on me,” Schenn said. “I didn’t see much. I don’t know if it went low glove or in between his body and his arm, but I saw it trickle it and it was a big sigh of relief.”

The puck glanced off Andrei Vasilevskiy‘s  sweater and drifted into the net agonizingly  slow.

“He had a lot of chances tonight, I thought that line was really good,” St Louis head coach Craig Berube said. “He finally finished it off, but since that line has been together I’ve really liked his game.”

The Lightning dropped to 39-11-4.

“I thought we had a little bit of a slow start as in playing with the pace we wanted to,” the Lightning;s Ryan McDonagh said. “You want to try an capitalize on some chances and keep the chances against us down a little bit more.”

The Blues improved to 25-22-5 with the win.

Jordan Binnington made 32 saves to get the win.

“This is a great way to finish off our road trip,” Binnington said. “We’ve really come together as a team. We’re playing smart hockey, disciplined hockey, and hopefully we’re going to keep this going and continue to make a push.”

The Blues are 8-2-1 in their last 11 matches.

“The composure that our team has found, the frustration doesn’t creep in as much. We had the three power plays in a row [in the second period] and we could have gotten really frustrated after that and we didn’t. You’ve got to stick with it and keep working,” Berube said.

[WATCH: All Blues vs. Lightning highlights]

Vasilevskiy took the loss on 38 saves.

“We got better as the game went out. Maybe there are a couple of old habits creeping in … trying to score the perfect goal. …When you go through the first period, we had 14 shot attempts and St. Louis had 15 shots on goal,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. ‘We had 14 attempts the whole period. It’s tough to win in this League when you do that.”