In Chicago, the St Louis Blues scored three times in the first period on Sunday in a 4-2 win over the Blackhawks.
Pavel Buchnevich hit for a goal and three points in the win.
Jordan Binnington made 32 saves i the win.
“Full 60,” Binnington said. “Just the feel from the beginning to the end. It was a fun game. The rink was loud right from the national anthem, so it was fun. A fun Sunday afternoon.”
The Blues bounced back from an ugly loss to the Nashville Predators on Friday.
The Blues improved to 11-8-1.
Jake Neighbours scored the first of his double on the game at 3:21 of the first for a 1-0 lead to the Blues.
“It was just a good play by the fellas to get the puck out of the zone,” Neighbours said. “I just saw that it took a bounce where I had a chance to get to it. We (Neighbours and Chicago defenseman Kevin Korchinski) kind of went neck and neck there. I just tried to shield him with my body and make sure I was protecting the puck at all costs. I just had a lot of speed, so just tried to go side to side.”
St Louis’ Kevin Hayes pushed the advantage to 2-0 at 5:27 of the opening stanza.
“We want to play this way,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “We don’t want to give up the goals we gave up. We won the game in Arizona, but you can’t give up that many goals. Obviously, last game (against Nashville), we let it get away from us again. It was good. We tightened it up. I thought we did a good job on [Connor] Bedard (zero points, minus-1) tonight. He’s a good player, but I thought we kept him out and took time and space away from him tonight. I thought our ‘D’ really closed plays out early tonight.”
Chicago trimmed the deficit to 2-1 at 14:45, on a marker from Ryan Donato.
“It was a little frustrating, I think, the way we just weren’t alert or kind of aware tonight, and not a physical effort,” Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson said. “I thought, obviously, we pushed back in the second again, and you’re always under duress when you’re behind and trying to catch up. But I don’t know why, I just think they were the hungrier team tonight and we let them be, so that’s frustrating to see because I thought we wanted to try and take that excitement from last game and put it into tonight, and we just didn’t do that.”
The Blackhawks dropped to 6-13-0.
“Disappointed,” Chicago’s Nick Foligno said. “I didn’t like our start. We talked about this. It’s building winning habits and understanding what those are. I understand in the sports world a lot of cliches get thrown around, like words, buzzwords, but there is a definition behind a lot of them. Commitment, that’s what we have to learn here. It’s just how to do it over and over again.
“Sometimes, it’s not fun or exciting, but it’s how you win in this league. We’re not over checks, we’re not reloading, and boom, boom, boom, they’re in the back of the net. We push back, get our game going. We get a goal, but then we just don’t sustain it. So, it’s a disappointing one because we really felt we were understanding of how we had success against Toronto, and we’re right back in the loss column.”
Buchnevich scored his goal at 17:02 to restore the two-goal lead at 3-1.
Neighbors scored his double at 13:52 of the third period..
Boris Katchouk hit for his first goal of the season with 1:12 left on the game clock to make it 4-2.
Arvid Soderblom made 24 saves in the loss.
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