In St Louis, the Blues were rattled by a three-goal first period by the Tampa Bay 
Lightning on Tuesday night.
St Louis came of the first intermission and posted three straight goals through the rest of regulation and downed the Lightning, 4-3, in the skills competition on a strike from Ryan O’Reilly.
“Just a lot of leadership in that room, just a lot of hockey to play, and a lot of time to get it back,” St. Louis’ Logan Brown said. “This is a great team, so I think we can score goals when we play that way. So, just no panic in our game and just keep battling and playing our game.”
Jordan Binnington made 30 saves after settling down from the first period.
“He’s our guy, we know that,” Blues head coach Craig Berube said. “There was no reason to pull him other than the momentum swing maybe for our team, but I didn’t want to take him out for that purpose. I didn’t feel that that was the right move. I can’t fault him on the goals, so I’m not going to pull him.”
Anthony Cirelli started the Lightning off for a 1-0 lead in the first period.
“We went to overtime, we had our chances, but we didn’t get it done,” Lightning head coach Job Cooper said. “We were a tired group at the end there.”
Corey Perry (power play) and Erik Cernak scored five seconds apart in the stanza to take a 3-0 lead into the second period.
Tampa dropped to 12-5-4.
“It’s human nature to kind of take your foot off the gas a little bit when you get an early lead like that,” the Lightning’s Ryan McDonagh said.
The Blues rallied with two goals in the second period from O’Reilly and Logan Brown.
“I think we just kind of reset on the bench,” O’Reilly said. “There were bad bounces and they kind of were just shooting everything, going to the net, getting chaos, got some goals early and put us on our heels. But it was a good thing we settled and took a deep breath, all of us, and started to chip away, started getting back, winning battles and just kind of getting on our toes a bit more and started to build it.”
St Louis improved to 12-7-3.
Ivan Barbashev hit for a power play marker in the early minutes of the third period.
The rematch is Thursday in Tampa.
Brian Elliott made 30 saves in the Bolts loss.
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