Blues erupt in second to defeat Avs, 6-1

A four-goal second period sent the St Louis Blues to a 6-1 thumping of the iviting Colorado Avalanche Thursday night.

Brayden Schenn struck twice for the Blues in the win that pushed them to a 33-20-3 record.

“I thought we’d been a little bit flat at home lately,” Schenn said. “You can try and start different ways, try to be physical early or offensive early. This is something we haven’t done this year.”

Carter Hutton made 23 saves in the win; he is 7-2-0 in his last nine starts.

“We still have to find ways to get more bodies at the net. That’s really it. We have to be better. I mean you look at the score, it’s embarrassing,” the Avs’ Gabriel Landeskog said after the loss.

Paul Stastny, Ivan Barbashev, Kyle Brodziak, and Alex Pietrangelo added single markers in the Blues’ win.

“It was a team that had each other’s backs tonight,” Blues head coach Mike Yeo said. “… I kind of felt it in the morning and at the rink there [Wednesday] getting ready for today. Some good conversations with some guys.

“I’ve said it before, we have a lot of character inside our locker room. It was a disappointing game a couple games ago and we were confident that they were going to bounce back (after a dismal loss to the Wild Tuesday).”

Gabriel Bourque scored the lone goal for the Avs.

“I thought we were competitive in the first period, even the second wasn’t so bad,” Avs head coach Jared Bednar said. “As the game went on, I thought we got less and less competitive.”

The Avs dropped to 29-20-4 with the loss.

[WATCH: All Avalanche vs. Blues highlights]

Jonathan Bernier got the start for the Avs but was given the hook in the second period after yielding three goals, making just 17 saves.

Semyon Varlamov, mopped up the rest of the way but was treated to the same Blues’ offense in giving up three goals of his own on just 11 shots.

“We passed up on some shooting opportunities,” Bednar said. “I thought early in the second period we did a good job getting some pucks to the net. We hit a post, one sneaks through [Hutton], a couple rebounds laying there, but we didn’t come up with enough of those rebounds when we did shoot it.”