In St Louis, Auston Matthews and Ilya Mikheyev scored in the third period to rally the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 6-5 win over the Blues on Saturday.
“It just happened really quick,” Matthews said. “Their guy (O’Reilly) draws inside on his backhand, so I just told [Bunting] to go to the net, see what happens and I was able to get some pretty good wood on it. He made a pretty nice play to corral the puck and put it in.”
St Louis’ home winning streak was snapped at 13 games.
The Blues dropped to 22-11-5.
“I was just talking about more or less the same things I’ve been talking to you here [about],” Blues head coach Craig Berube said. “We’ve got to do things quicker, move the puck quicker and play, skate and attack, get going. We kind of watched a little bit tonight and didn’t put the pressure on them enough overall. That’s basically what I got out of this tonight. We didn’t dictate enough tonight.”
Jack Campbell made 20 saves in the Toronto win.
The Maple Leafs improved to 24-9-3.
Ryan O’Reilly hit for a pair goals for St Louis.
“We just kind of gave up the middle of the ice a little too much,” O’Reilly said. “We weren’t our normal heavy to play against and stopping on pucks and such. A team like that, they’re so skilled offensively and thrive off that. We just kind of gave them too much early, and it starts with myself. I was horrendous defensively tonight and wasn’t hard enough to play against. I think other guys probably feel that way too. … We’re not going to win a lot of games if we don’t defend well. It’s frustrating, but I think we got what we deserved tonight. We kind of played their game and obviously got beat at it.”
Mitchell Marner, John Tavares, and Timothy Liljegren also scored for the Maple Leafs.
“That’s crazy, a roller-coaster ride,” Marner said. “Obviously that’s not the game we kind of want to play, but I think we did a great job with just staying with it, making sure we’re doing the right things no matter if we gave up the lead, they took it, or anything like that. We just kept fighting back. … I think we’re all happy with how we finished this game.”
Brandon Saad, Robert Thomas and Niko Mikkola added single markers for St Louis.
Jordan Binnington made 34 saves in the St Louis loss.
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