In their fifth and final meeting of the season, the St. Louis Blues beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-1 at the Scottrade Center on Monday night. The Blues (29-13-4) won four of the five matchups between the clubs this season.
The Avalanche (19-18-10) conclude their season-long five-game road trip with a disappointing 1-2-2 record.
“It was the last game of our road trip – five games – it’s always tough to win the last one,” coach Patrick Roy said. “But at the same time, we knew that would be a good test for us. I’ll give them credit, they played a good game.”
St. Louis capitalized on a dominant second period in which they had a 14-5 shooting advantage and scored two goals.
With two assists in the second period, Alexander Steen extended his point streak to 10 games (7-11-18). The 30-year-old leads the NHL with 17 points in the 2015 calendar year.
Former Avalanche center Paul Stastny tallied his third assist in his last two games against the club that he spent the first eight years of his NHL career playing with.
Carl Gunnarsson opened the scoring 8:06 into the game with a blast from the point that bounced off of Alex Tanguay on the way past Semyon Varlamov.
Colorado evened the score just five minutes later when Matt Duchene corralled the puck in the slot, spun around, and sent a backhand toward the net that caromed off of Stastny’s stick and into the net.
With Gabriel Landeskog in the penalty box for slashing, Jaden Schwartz scored the Blues’ top-ranked power play’s 40th goal of the season just 32 seconds into the second stanza.
The Blues road the momentum from the goal and tilted the ice toward Varlamov in the second period.
TJ Oshie scored his 13th of the season to extend the Blues lead to two midway through the period. Oshie has nine points (2-7-9) in his last eight games against the Avs.
“I would say this, their tracking is pretty solid. When they lose the puck, they come back very fast. Obviously that takes a lot of time away from us and is probably a big difference in the game. Their D did a good job holding the gap and made it even tougher. Obviously it helps to hold the gap when you have forewords back checking like they did. I guess we can learn from that game.”
The Avs will come home to host he Boston Bruins in their final game before upcoming the All-Star break.
