In St Louis, Jordan Binnington made 18 saves as the Blues defeated the visiting Buffalo Sabres, 5-1.
Jack Eichel was the lone goal scorer for the Sabres who dropped to 19-18-7.
“I don’t think we made good decisions with the puck,” Eichel said. “We turned it over too much, and that’s it.
“Obviously when you don’t play for five (days), you’re not going to be as crisp as you are usually when you’re playing a lot. We were rested. We should have had a lot of energy. I just didn’t think our game ever got going.”
Alexander Steen struck twice for the Blues and added an assist.
His linemates, Robert Thomas and Tyler Bozak, added a goal each and two assists in the win.
“We take a lot of pride in playing in front of our fans and in our town,” Steen said. “We want to make sure that it’s a difficult place to play in, but in saying that, we don’t really change much as far as on the road and at home. We want to have a consistent game and we try to focus as much as we can on ourselves and how we can get better.”
David Perron added a power play goal to the scoresheet when he made the score 3-1.
The Blues smothered the Sabres’ forwards and limited any chances beyond the Eichel goal.
“I thought we were pretty good defensively all around,” Blueshead coach Craig Berube said. “I thought that we had urgency in the D zone and pressuring and not giving them time. We talked about not giving this team time and space with the puck, and I thought we did a good job of it.”
[WATCH: All Sabres vs. Blues highlights]
Linus Ullmark made 26 saves in the loss.
“Everybody needs to get hungrier to shoot on net,” coach Ralph Krueger said. “I think we still give up too many opportunities, our D and our forwards, to try to make a play, and the other thing will be to get bodies there. We need to find other ways to create net pressure, and we’re going to have to work hard on that to turn this result around.”
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