EDMONTON, Alberta — The Blues went to overtime for the third game in a row, this time thanks to a very late goal from Vladimir Tarasenko to salvage a point and then the Blues won in a shootout, with Jordan Binnington stopping all three shots in a 4-3 win at Rogers Place on Thursday.
Tarasenko's goal in the slot came with the Blues playing short-handed after Pavel Buchnevich was called for tripping with 1:02 to go. The Blues still pulled Binnington and at five on five tied the game with 19.1 seconds to play. It looked like Edmonton won when Leon Draisaitl scored with 2:38 to go in overtime but a replay review wiped the goal out for offside and despite some good scoring chances for the Blues, the game went to a shootout where Jordan Kyrou scored.
The comeback allowed the Blues to overcome three bench minors — one for sending out the wrong starting lineup and two for having too many men on the ice, and Edmonton’s league-best power play took advantage of the free chances to score twice. The Blues' extended their modest point streak to three games.
It was another strong defensive effort by the Blues, who held Edmonton to just 15 shots through two periods, including just five in the second, but the Blues goal-scoring hasn’t quite caught up with the defense. The Blues came into the game having scored five goals total in their previous three games, and only two of them at five-on-five. They got three this time, from Kyrou in the first period and from Robert Thomas in the third, just 49 seconds after the Oilers had scored to go up 3-2. While the Blues had four power plays, they couldn’t score on any of them.
As well as the Blues’ penalty kill has done in the previous two games, starting to right a season’s worth of troubles, Edmonton’s power play was just too hard to stop and an end-to-end drive by Connor McDavid, Edmonton’s second power-play goal of the night, turned out to be decisive.
The Blues also got another solid game from Binnington, who has thrived since he was given a game off a week ago and while he lost his chance for a shutout just over a minute into the game, he served up several outstanding saves, including three on one flurry with about seven minutes to go in the third period, but Edmonton’s Stuart Skinner was doing the same thing at the other end.
The Blues didn’t allow an even-strength goal in the first two periods before Edmonton went up 3-1 on a deflection by Kailer Yamamoto with 9:24 to go in the third period.
The Blues' comeback bid looked to have ended when Buchnevich was called for tripping with 62 seconds to play as he tried to stop what would probably have been a breakaway toward the empty Blues net but the Blues' third short-handed goal of the season saved the day.
