Blues down Leafs, 4-1

In St Louis Saturday, the Blues erupted for three goals in the middle frame to break a scoreless tie and go on to the beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-1.

It was the second win of the season for the Blues.

Robert Bortuzzo, Zach Sanford and Ryan O’Reilly scored in the second period and Ivan Barbashev potted a goal in the third.

For O’Reilly, it was his first goal with the Blues.

“I was hoping it would be a lot sooner, but it was a beautiful play with [Pat] Maroon working hard and Tarasenko with a beautiful pass,” O’Reilly said. “It’s nice to get it out of the way. It was in the back of my head thinking about it, so it’s nice to move on from that and get back to playing my game.”

Jake Allen made 22 saves to get the win.

“That looked a lot more like the St. Louis Blues tonight,” Blues coach Mike Yeo said. “I thought the guys came out and gave us a great response as far as last game (a 3-2 loss at the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday) went down and the way we talked about how we had to play the game, we did it to a T.”

It didn’t hurt that the Leafs looked rather pedestrian in the loss.

“It was pretty textbook hockey. Everyone bought in,” Allen said. “That was nice to see. Everyone came to play tonight and if we realize if we do that every night, the majority of the times we’ll be in games and have a good chance of success.”

Morgan Rielly picked up the lone goal for the Leafs in the third period.

“We have to do a better job obviously,” Rielly said. “Less turnovers, play off the cycle a little more. We just have to get it in and grind a little more than we did tonight. It starts with clean breakouts, less turnovers in our own end, more talk to one another to make it easier. The better we do that, the more we’ll get through the neutral zone and the better off we’ll be.”

[WATCH: All Blues vs. Maple Leafs highlights]

Frederik Andersen made 21 saves in the loss.

“In the end, they worked hard and they competed harder on the puck, in the hard areas, and we turned the puck over,” Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said after the loss, their second straight. “We weren’t good enough. I thought we had a bit of that the other night and then, obviously, we’re figuring out that — we scored early, we scored easy, it was pretty loose and everything was great. Now we’re finding out it’s in the NHL, it’s hard to score, teams compete hard on you, teams adjust and they’re going to play you hard.”