MONTREAL — The Blues arrived at Bell Centre on Saturday night with six players on injured reserve, and a seventh — defenseman Nick Leddy — out with an upper-body injury.
Despite leads of 1-0, 2-1 and 4-3, they couldn’t escape with their third consecutive victory, falling to the Montreal Canadiens, 5-4. They are 19-18-3 for the season, failing to get to three games above .500 for the first time since winning their first three games of the regular season.
They close out this four-game road trip Sunday against Central Division rival Minnesota as they continue their effort to get into a wild-card playoff position after losing for the fourth straight time (0-3-1) in Montreal since the 2017-18 season.
With former Blue Jake Allen in goal for Montreal, the woeful Canadiens snapped a six-game losing streak, improving to 16-21-3.
In a wild start to the third period, Montreal took a 3-2 lead just 36 seconds in after a Brayden Schenn turnover behind the St. Louis net turned into a Cole Caufield goal.
The Blues tied it on Nikita Alexandrov's first NHL goal, which came on the rebound of a Calle Rosen shot. The Blues then took a 4-3 lead on Pavel Buchnevich's power-play goal.
But the next two goals belonged to Montreal, which took a 5-4 lead with 6:24 left on Johnathan Drouin's goal.
For the third time on this road trip, the Blues scored first taking the lead in the opening period. It just took a while on Saturday.
In the final minute of play Christian Dvorak had a breakaway for Montreal, splitting Blues defenders Justin Faulk and Rosen. You might recall Dvorak from Oct. 29 at Enterprise Center: The former Arizona Coyote scored a hat trick in that 7-4 Canadiens victory, loss No. 4 in the Blues’ eight-game losing streak.
This time Jordan Binnington turned him away, sprawling forward to thwart a Dvorak backhand attempt. The Blues took off in the other direction, with Schenn and Brandon Saad steaming down the ice on a 2-on-1 rush.
Schenn, coming down right wing, waited until the last possible second before he sent a pass over to Saad, who stuffed it past Allen for a 1-0 Blues lead with just 34.2 seconds left in the first. It was the sixth goal in three games for the newly-formed “No-Nonsense Line” of Saad-Schenn-Ivan Barbashev.
Barbashev got the secondary assist on the play. For the suddenly-revived Saad, it was his 12th goal of the season and his fourth in three games.
The Blues lost another defenseman Saturday when Robert Bortuzzo left with a lower-body injury in the first period and did not return. That left them with just Colton Parayko, Faulk, Niko Mikkola, Calle Rosen and Steven Santini for the remainder of the game.
With Leddy ruled out Saturday morning by Berube due to an upper-body injury, the Blues called up Tyler Tucker from Springfield of the AHL. Tucker would give the Blues six defensemen Sunday in Minnesota, when they close out this four-game road trip.
The Blues got in penalty trouble in the second period, particularly in the area of high sticks.
But first off, the Blues lost that 1-0 lead very early in the second. Jake Neighbours slipped and fell playing defense in the Montreal offensive zone. That allowed Joel Armia a clean look and he zipped one past Binnington for his second goal of the season just 1:43 into the period.
The Blues regained the lead a little over five minutes later on a rare fourth-line goal. Tyler Pitlick, who had a very strong checking game Saturday, came up with a loose puck along the wall and passed to Alexey Toropchenko for a wrist shot and his second goal of the season - and just the fourth goal of his brief NHL career.
So it was 2-1 Blues with 13:01 left in the second. And then came the penalties problems. After a turnover, Faulk was called for holding. The Blues killed that one off, with the help of a Caulfield shot that clanged off the post from the left circle, and then a save by Binnington on a one-time by Nick Suzuki from the slot.
Less than two minutes after killing off that infraction, the Blues were in more trouble when Barbashev was whistled for high-sticking. Wait, it gets worse. After reviewing the play, it was determined to be a four-minute double-minor for high-sticking.
The Blues worked and worked, and got a little help when the Canadiens missed on a couple of open looks. But with just 30 seconds left on the four minutes, Kirby Dach scored from the slot to tie the game 2-2 with 3:45 left in the period. It was his sixth goal of the season.
Wait, there’s more. With 2:44 left in the second, Alexandrov went off for high-sticking. But the Blues PK got the job done on this one and it was 2-2 entering the third.
