In St Louis, Robert Thomas hit for the game-winner in extra time on Friday night to give the Blues a 4-3 win over the Minnesota Wild.
“It was a good speed play,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “‘Tommer’ comes off the bench and got the puck in our own zone and he transports it with speed up the ice. … Then ‘Vladi’ made a great read on it, [he] was looking to shoot, but he saw ‘Tommer’ slide over there and made a great play.”
The Blues rallied with two goals in the third period to overcome a 1-3 deficit to the Wild.
“I am proud of our guys, that’s a gutsy win,” Berube said. “They battled, I just wish that we kept that energy going throughout the second period, but we didn’t.”
St Louis improved to 41-20-10.
Ville Husso made 35 saves in the Blues win.
The Wild scored three straight goals after the Blues had taken a q=- lead off a goal from Pavel Buchnevich in the first.
Kevin Fiala, Kirill Kaprizov and Jacob Middleton were the Wild strikers.
“It turned out we played great,” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “We didn’t get the result we wanted. Obviously, we messed up in overtime. The last two goals in regulation were not great goals by us as a team. We didn’t make them earn those two. We have a system in overtime, and we didn’t do it. We ended up getting scored on.
“We know who we are. We know how we played. We didn’t like the result of course, but we know how we played for the majority of the game.”
Minnesota dropped to 43-21-6.
“It was nice, (but) it’s bittersweet because I’ve been on the schneid for a bit here since I got here,” Middleton said. “I felt like I was getting some good chances to help get us on the scoreboard and, fortunately, it was a good goal to start the third period. I try to keep my game pretty simple and just do the right thing, help my partner, help my teammates on the ice, but I did feel I felt like I had some juice tonight. I really wanted to help get to a point with these guys.”
Justin Faulk and Brayden Schenn scored in the third period to force the extra session.
“If you actually look back on the clip, I was probably doing a little bit too much circling in my own end,” Schenn said. “Ville made some saves (in tight on Tyson Jost and Fiala) and I had some juice and some energy and kind of picked up a little bit of speed, me and [Ivan Barbashev] 2-on-2. He stayed wide, I just tried to test the defenseman and it worked out that time.”
The Blues are 8-0-1 in their nine matches with the Wild.
“I don’t know. I’ve seen it go a bunch of different ways,” Faulk said. “Sometimes you can get the better of a team in certain situations. And it can be a coin flip sometimes. It just goes one way for a certain amount of time. But I’m sure there’s a team in the League right now that has our number pretty good, right?”
Cam Talbot made 24 saves in Wild loss.
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