The St Louis Blues were on track for a win over the Chicago Blackhawks Wednesday with a 3-2 lead heading into the third period.
Instead of gaining ground on the wild card race in the Western Conference, the Blues coughed up the lead and the Hawks scored twice in the third to take a 4-3 win.
Duncan Keith drove the nail deep with a power play goal with less than nine seconds 
left in regulation.
“Well, I think we know that, the importance of their points for them,” Keith said of the Blues. “Yeah, I think there’s something to be said for trying to play for that in some ways, but we’re trying to win the game. You know, at the end of the day, it’s a bigger game for them, but I thought that we did a good job of kind of matching that intensity, and for us it’s just more fun to play in a game like that, more than anything. We haven’t played in those situations where we’re really playing for much at this point.”
One point would have tied the Colorado Avalanche for the second wild card spot in the west.
“It’s tough to not sit here and talk about winning the game, that’s for sure, and I think it’s even tougher to say that we just didn’t play well enough, especially when the game was on the line in the third period to deserve the win,” Blues head coach Mike Yeo said. “Nerves and bad decisions, a combination maybe of both, but I felt that we were a little bit tight in the third period, we weren’t as aggressive as far as our checking game, but the puck decisions that we made were very poor and just let them ramp it up and let them get momentum, and obviously the more that we did that, the more it put us on our heels.”
J-F Berube made 30 saves to get the win.
Vladimir Tarasenko, Brayden Schenn and  Robert Bortuzzo scored for the Blues.
Blake Hillman, Andreas Martinsen and Alex DeBrincat also scored for the Hawks who rallied form a 3-1 deficit.
“We were down 3-1 and we had some great chances on our power play, and that was a big, timely shorthanded goal that got us back in the game,” Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville said. “Our second period wasn’t very good, and the first and third obviously were our best. We chipped away, and we got a timely power-play goal.”
[WATCH:Â All Blackhawks vs. Blues highlights]
Jake Allen with
“I think it was probably a lot of us, nervous. You want to win so bad obviously and come away with two points, you start overthinking things and you stop moving your feet, and that’s what we did there for a little bit, and it just got away from us,” Schenn said after the game.
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