Blues rout Avs, 8-2 | Pro Hockey News

In Denver, the St Louis Blues came to town looking to vent some frustration, and did just that in an 8-2 smack down of the Avalanche on Saturday.

Brayden Schenn and Pavel Buchnevich e scored hat tricks in the Blues win.

Jordan Binnington made 36 saves in the win..

“I think we’ve been playing pretty solid hockey, and tonight we did a good job of scoring some goals and doing some things to score goals,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “Special teams were really good. Our kill got a couple of [short-handed goals] out of it and scored a couple big power-play goals in the third period. But overall, I thought it was a good team effort. Getting to an early start and scoring early. Our goaltender was really solid, too.”

The Blues moved to 7-5-.

“I think it’s a big game for our club, just confidence-wise, and you can see things were connecting for the guys tonight,” Binnington said. “We’ve been working hard, we’ve been working on our foundation, and I think just buying in, finding a way, seeing success and seeing guys get some goals and assists, and it all starts from our framework and our foundation.”

St Louis was up 4-1 entering the third period, and added four more in the frame.

“The third period was a joke. That was the worst period I’ve ever seen from our club,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “We’re getting outplayed. Goaltender’s getting outplayed by their goaltender. Forwards are getting outplayed by their forwards. ‘D’ are getting outplayed by their ‘D.’ Not for the whole game, but for big enough stretches. That’s why the score gets run up.”

St Louis went out to a 4-0 lead into the middle frame.

Schenn hit for his 68 seconds into the game for a 1-0 lead, his double came at 18:53 for a 2-0 advantage to the Blues.

“Our offense has really changed or started to come around since the last time we were here in this building (4-1 loss on Nov. 1),” Schenn said. “We had some meetings and [were] kind of shown League-wide trends of how to score and what really works and what we were doing that wasn’t right. So ever since then, the buy-in has been there, and guys are getting rewarded for it.

“It’s not anything flashy. It’s putting the puck in deep, grinding teams down, getting to the net, ‘D’ shooting pucks, and not passing up opportunities. It’s not a recipe other teams don’t know, it’s just you have to have a commitment to do it, and when you do, other things open up for you, and like I said, guys get rewarded.”

St Louis’ Torey Krug extended the advantage to 3-0 with just two seconds left on the fist period clock.

Buchnevich scored his first at 1:52 of the middle frame to balloon the lead to 4-0.

Mikko Rantanen stopped the Blues run at 16:07 of the period to make it 4-1 headed to the third where all sorts of bad things happened to the Avs.

Buchnevich hit for his double at 1:20 to push the lead to 5-1, and Schenn finished his hat trick at 2:49, off the power play, for a 6-1 lead.

“I’m not a pure goal-scorer. I don’t know how many hat tricks I have in my career (four), but it always feels good to get rewarded,” Schenn said. “Thomas put that one on a tee for me and I was able to hit it.”

Buchnevich hit for the hat trick on a shorthanded goal at 15:57 for a 7-1 lead.

“It’s pretty cool. I never been involved in a game when two guys scored a hat trick,” Buchnevich said. “It’s obviously a good team. Stanley Cup champion a couple years ago (2022). Divisional game, basically a four-point game, and you’re happy to get the win.”

Alexey Toropchenko added insult to the scoreboard when he struck at 19:11 for an 8-1 count.

Jack Johnson scored a so what goal goal for the Avs at 19:32 for the 8-2 final.

“A lot of things kind of got to go wrong to lose [8-2],” Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar said. “This is a really tough streak of games, honestly, basically getting shut out whatever four of the last five or four of the last six. Yeah, It’s a weird one.”