In St Louis, the Blues and visiting Vegas Golden Knights locked up in a contest for the second wild card spot in the Western Conference on Monday night. 
It was all one might have hoped to view.
Jonathan Marchessault scored with 49 seconds gone in extra time to give Vegas a 2-1 win, and put one more point between the Knights and the Blues as the games become precious few down the stretch.
Marchessault scored his 39th of the campaign after picking up the puck below the goal line, and drifting to the left of the cage for a high wrister from the below the circle.
Logan Thompson made 30 saves in the win.
Thompson had stopped the Blues’ Pavel Buchnevich on a penalty shot 19 seconds before the game winner.
“Certainly he’s a player you want [to have] that opportunity. The goalie made a good save,” St. Louis coach Drew Bannister said of Buchnevich. “That’s part of the game.”
The Golden Knights moved to 39-25-7, they are five points clear of the Blues.
Vegas took a 1-0 lead at 5:59 of the opening stanza, with Pavel Dorofeyev scoring off a push off the right boards to the crease, where he banged it home.
“Just where we are right now matters,” Cassidy said. “If it’s earlier in the regular season, you don’t worry so much about it. … You want to make sure you walk out of here with the extra point. I thought it was a real well goaltended game, to be honest, at the end of the day. Both goalies gave their teams great chances to win, and we were one shot better.”
The Blues dropped to 38-30-4, they have won six of their last eight games.
“We had the opportunities,” Bannister said. “In the third period, we had some good looks and the goalie was able to keep the puck out of the net. But it wasn’t from the lack of opportunities. We had them. We had to finish on our chances.”
The Blues finally broke through the third third period with just over five minutes left on the clock.
Brandon Saad converted a nifty cross slot backhand pass from Brayden Schenn, for the tip in at the left side of the crease for the 1-1 tie.
“They’re a good team. We fought hard,” Schenn said. “You’re not going to dominate the whole game, but I thought we came hard in the third and had some chances, lots of chances to score. It’s nice to come away with one point. Had a chance in OT.
“We played them hard, and we’re going to carry the momentum over to the next game. This team isn’t going to quit fighting. We’re going to go all the way to the finish. We still believe in here [that] we can make the playoffs.”
The Blues have a tall order ahead of the3m, trailing by five and Vegas with a game in hand. 
Jordan Binnington made 32 saves in the loss.
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