In St Louis, Jaxson Stauber made his NHL debut on Saturday for the Chicago Blackhawks, and made 29 saves in 5-3 win over the Blues.
“It felt really good,” Stauber said. “I can’t put it into words. It was so awesome and exciting. I’ve dreamed about this for so long that I didn’t know how it was going to feel, but it felt really good.”
Chicago moved to 14-26-4.
“I saw this coming before we got here to this bit of a stretch here,” Chicago coach Luke Richardson said. “I thought we were playing some good hockey, but we just couldn’t connect. Maybe not getting the scoring chances. When guys aren’t confident, they don’t shoot confident. Overall, when we got over that hump, we got a win, and it was a breath of fresh air. Guys are enjoying each other. We’re winning together. It becomes infectious and contagious.”
Jason Dickinson scored on the Blackhawks’ first shot on goal near the midway point of the first period.
Sam Lafferty pushed the lead to 2-0 in the first.
Chicago extended the lad to 3-0 on a strike by Reese Johnson with two minutes gone in the middle frame.
“It’s obviously disappointing,” Blues coach Craig Berube said. “I thought we started the game off excellent, really moving the puck well. Shooting, getting chances. Made two mistakes that shouldn’t happen and they’re both in the net and it’s 2-0, so we’re fighting uphill the rest of the game, and it wasn’t good enough, obviously.”
St Louis finally responded with a power play goal from Jordan Kyrou.
“We gave up, not a lot of chances, but the ones we gave up went in our net,” Berube said. ‘Some of them we shouldn’t have done. It’s careless mistakes.”
Chicago replied with a marker from Andreas Athanasiou for a 4-1 lead, but Ivan Barbashev then pulled the Blues to within 4-2 in the second.
The Blues’ Nick Leddy made it 4-3 in the 10th minute of the third period.
“We had chances, I think,” Leddy said. “At the end of the day, their goalie played pretty well tonight. At the end of the day, they capitalized more on their chances than us.”
Chicago’s Max Domi scored at 16:01 of the third for the 5-3 final.
“Winning is fun. It’s what we play for,” Domi said. “It wasn’t pretty tonight, but we’ll take it.”
Jordan Binnington got the start for the Blues, he yielded four goals and made three saves before getting the hook in the opening period.
Thomas Greiss made 10 saves in a mop up role.
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