In St Louis, the New York Islanders’ faint hopes of a playoff push turned a bit dimmer on Saturday in a6-1 loss to the Blues.
Justin Faulk hit for a double for St Louis.
“Our team was focused tonight,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “They were ready to play. That was really good. With the energy that was spent in last night’s game and the emotion, we had a lot today, which was good to see.”
Jordan Binnington made 30 saves in the Blues win.
“It felt good,” Binnington said. “I’ve been trying to put in the work for a while now. We played a great game, great first period, great second period. It was fun to feel the flow of the game again, and a little bit of rhythm. It was a lot of fun. Good Saturday night in St. Louis.”
Vladimir Tarasenko and Robert Thomas added single markers for St Louis.
St Louis improved to 42-20-10.
Nick Leddy got the Blues rolling with a strike for a 1-0 lead in the first period.
“Just an uncharacteristic second period,” New York’s Anders Lee said. “Too many odd-man rushes [against], there was a clear breakaway, 3-on-1s, gave ‘Varly’ no chance. You don’t see that from us very often, and tonight they put it in on us. … You give them that many clean looks, they’re going to put them in the net.”
Tarasenko pushed the lead to 2-0 in the opening frame.
St Louis scored four times in the middle frame.
Grant Hutton was the lone striker for the Isles, it was his first NHL goal.
“It was exciting, obviously,” Hutton said. “It’s unfortunate where the score was at that point in the game, but it was kind of a lucky goal. Just throw it on net. It must have gone off their defense, but it’s a good feeling. It’s always nice to come back into the room and guys saying congrats. Just an unfortunate outcome for us tonight.”
Ivan Barbashev scored to give the Blues a 5-0 lead in the second.
“He was great today, especially in the first period,” Barbashev said of Binnington. “He made a really good couple of saves, especially the one on the power play. That probably kept us in the game, especially early on, but he was good today. We trust in him and he did a really good job for us tonight.”
After the Islanders scored to make it 5-1, Thomas closed out the scoring for the 6-1 final before the horn at the end of the second period.
“I thought guys were dialed in pretty good,” Berube said. “We really did a lot of good things in the offensive zone tonight. I thought we reloaded tonight. David Perron, I saw him, I don’t know how many times, reload tonight, breaking plays up. We transported the puck and got it going the other way quickly. Pretty good effort all around.”
The Isles dropped to 33-29-9.
“I thought our first period was fine, our power play was good, we had a couple good looks, but they capitalized on their chances,” New York coach Barry Trotz said. “When we got down by two, I thought we could kind of dig ourselves out of it in the second and early, we didn’t. We turned pucks over, we were really light on the walls and just too many mental errors. It went south, I think, after the third and fourth goals.”
Semyon Varlamov made 25 saves in the New York loss.
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