Blues down Sabres, 6-4 Three-goal outbursts make for entertaining game

In St Louis, the Blues surrendered a 3-0 lead to the visiting Buffalo Sabres on Thursday.

The Blues rallied back with three straight goals to take a 6-3 lead, winning 64.

Brayden Schenn and Jake Neighbours  each hit for doubles in the win.

“Roller-coaster game,” Neighbours said. “That’s not how we want to play obviously. We’re happy that we got the two points, and we’ll move on from it, but there’s definitely areas that we can clean up. Just being harder, harder to play against, harder in our battles and stuff like that and just trying to piece together 60 minutes.”

The Blues moved to 12-9-1.

Jordan Binnington made 42 saves in the win.

The Blues grabbed a 3-0 lead before sitting back.

Brandon Saad hit for a goal  with 68 seconds gone in the game for a 1-0 lead to St Louis.

Schenn scored his first of the game for a 2-0 lead at 5:02

Neighbours’ first pushed the advantage to 3-0 midway through the first.

“We created our own mess,” Buffalo coach Don Granato said. “First period, I thought we had possession in the [defensive] zone and handed pucks over too easily, which is tough to recover from when you think you’re exiting and you’re not. They were very opportunistic, obviously, but we made the mess ourselves.”

The Sabres rallied to tie the game, 3-3, in an outburst that necessitated a timeout by the Blues.

Dahlin trimmed the deficit to 3-1 at 13:32 of the first.

Zach Benson  cut it to 3-2 at 6:10 of the middle frame.

“I feel like we had them pretty hemmed in there in their zone for long stretches of time,” Sabres center Casey Mittelstadt said. “… I think you saw a lot of Sabres hockey out there with the chances and the way we were creating.”

Peyton Krebs knotted it, 3-3, 10:53 of the second.

St Louis called the timeout after the third goal.

“He didn’t have to say anything special,” Schenn said of Blues coach Craig Berube. “We were going out there and just shooting ourselves in the foot. Turned over pucks and not playing hard enough. Just not tonight, but in general in the second period. That’s something we have to change. Can’t be giving up 45 shots a night and relying on your goalies so much. Two points, we’ll definitely take it. It’s a tight league, but we’ve got lots to clean up here and start tilting the ice a little bit and start taking over games.”

The timeout lead to a two-goal outburst from the Blues.

Kevin Hayes gave the Blues the lead, 4-3, at 13:04, and Schenn pushed it to 5-3 at 13:28.

Neighbours’  double came at at 4:38 of the third for a 6-3 lead.

“I thought that he had another strong game, being around that net, power play too,” Berube said of Neighbours. “He’s doing all the little things right and it’s paying off for sure.”

The Sabres dropped to 10-11-2.

“We had our chances,” the Sabres’ Rasmus Dahlin said. “I mean, we played really good. We could have had five more goals. But they didn’t want to go in today. It is what it is sometimes, but I think who got to just look forward. We played really good offense, we created a lot and we can’t think too much about this.”

Buffalo’s JJ Peterka scored at 16:42 for the 6-4 final.

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Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 14 saves in the loss.