In Denver, the visiting St Louis Blues were riding a 14-0-2 point streak on Tuesday. It came to a crashing end in a 5-3 loss to the Avalanche. 
Darcy Kuemper made 29 saves in the Avs win.
“They’ve been playing awesome,” Colorado’s Erik Johnson said. “They have so many guys with so many points and three super deep lines, and they’re not even fully healthy yet. Neither are we. It was a hard-fought game, had a playoff atmosphere, and I think that’s probably what we needed just to get back feeling the way we needed to.”
Coupled with the Florida Panthers’ loss on Tuesday, the Avalanche are two points back of them for the President’s Cup trophy.
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect game,” Johnson said. “I think there’s always going to be some lapses throughout the course of a hockey game. It’s a game mistakes, and there’s always going to be some made. Some are gonna cost you. Some aren’t. I think what we got tonight is what we needed. I think it was a game that was important for us to play the right way, and we did for the majority of the game. And it felt it felt good. I think the guys needed that one.”
Ryan O’Reilly hit for a double for the Blues.
“It wasn’t our best effort tonight. We know that,” O’Reilly said. “I think we were a little nervous. We knew they were going to be extremely desperate and mostly on their toes. We wanted to be safe and do the right thing, and for them they got the momentum and it’s tough to get it back from those guys. They move the puck so well. They skate so well. It’s tough.”
Valeri Nichushkin, Johnson, and Josh Manson gave the Avs a 3-0 lead in the game.
“We didn’t get rewarded in the first period, but then it came in the second and then a little bit in the third,” Manson said. “I thought we had a lot of chances in the first, and we controlled the majority of that game.”
The Blues’ Brandon Saad stopped the Avs’ run with a goal to make it 3-1.
Colorado took a 4-1 lead, with just nine seconds of clean ice gone in the third period, off a goal from Artturi Lehkonen .
“It can’t happen,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said.
Nazem Kadri hit for an empty net goal for the 5-3 final.
“It’s frustrating, especially because we felt like we played a good first period,” Blues defenseman Torey Krug said. “We thought that if we got the first [goal], it’d go a long way and unfortunately it kind of unraveled on us. We responded pretty well in the third period, obviously too little too late.”
Jordan Binnington made 29 saves in the loss.
“They were a little more desperate than us,” O’Reilly said. “We just didn’t respond quick enough to it.”
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