In St Louis, Pierre-Luc Dubois hit for a double and three points on Thursday night to lead the Winnipeg Jets to a 5-2 win over the Blues.
“The last couple of games has been the best he’s played,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said. “He really has been strong on the puck. He’s been good defensively. Been great [on] the power play.
“His line (with Kyle Connor and Michael Eyssimont) has been outstanding for us. So, this is the best I’ve seen him play and we’re just going to keep pushing him because he can be a dominant center in this league.”
Connor Hellebuyck made 29 saves in the Winnipeg win.
The Jets improved to 17-7-1.
The tension and frustration are certainly building in St Louis.
“If everybody doesn’t come to the rink ready to really compete and move your feet and do things right, and be detailed and attentive, we’re not going to go anywhere,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “That’s the bottom line. As a coaching staff, we’re preparing them.
“We tell them what they need to do against this team, look for it, this is what you’ve got to do, but we can’t go out and play for them. They have to go out and play as a team, and right now, we’re not doing it. We’re not doing it enough, we’re not consistent enough 100 percent. You lose in this league.”
St Louis dropped to 12-15-0.
“It’s the same story every time,” the Blues’ Robert Thomas (one goal) said. “Yeah, it’s frustrating.”
Dubois scored in the first period for a 1-0 lead to the Jets, and Kyle Connor scored early in the middle frame for a 2-0 advantage, and Blake Wheeler hit for a marker for a 3-0 lead.
“I think we’re getting a lot of flex to the net,” Wheeler said. “There’s a lot more movement, and that just makes us dangerous.”
Thomas made it 3-1, but Dubois hit for his double to make it 4-1 for Winnipeg, in the third.
St Louis tried to push back in the third with a goal from Josh Leivo to make the score, 4-2.
“We made a push,” St Louis’ Ryan O’Reilly said. “We were down a few going into the third and came out, we did things well and they got a lucky break on [their fourth goal]. It definitely deflated us a bit, but we stuck with it and we kept going.
“We had some good opportunities to get one of those in and make it a one-goal game. You could tell they would have been very tight and could have had a chance. It’s tough being in that situation.”
The Jets’ Cole Perfetti hit an empty net for the 5-2 final with just under two minutes left in the game.
“We just have a ton of respect for [St. Louis] and we come into games with them knowing how we have to play the game,” Wheeler said. “I felt like, at times, we were kind of just trying to survive out there. That’s when they got the momentum back. Shift after shift, they come at you.”
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Thomas Greiss made 15 saves in the Blues loss.
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