BUFFALO, N.Y. — Looking for a chance to build on the momentum of Jordan Binnington’s good start on Saturday, Craig Berube decided to put him in on Thursday against Buffalo.
It was another good step forward for Binnington, but the momentum that mattered most was from red-hot forward Vladimir Tarasenko, who had his second straight multi-goal game and third in the past six games with a hat trick and Robert Thomas had five assists as the suddenly unbeatable Blues extended their win streak to a season-high seven games with a 6-2 win over the Sabres at Key Bank Arena.
The win moves the Blues to the brink of securing a playoff spot and ran their record in the past 10 games to 9-0-1 and 5-0-1 in their past six road games. The Blues now come home for a big weekend against division rivals Minnesota (at home) and Nashville (on the road).
Thomas upped his assist total to 53, making him the first Blue to have 50 assists since Doug Weight in 2002-03, when Thomas was 3. Tarasenko had his fifth regular-season hat trick, his first five-point game and got to 70 points for the fourth time in his Blues career, joining Bernie Federko, Brett Hull, Brian Sutter, Pavol Demitra and Garry Unger, as players to do it four or more times. His has 31 goals; he had seven total in the previous two seasons as he was limited to 34 games by multiple shoulder surgeries.
For Binnington, three of his previous four starts had come as part of back-to-backs, where the Blues had little choice but to use him. His defense didn’t do him a whole lot of favors, as Buffalo had a lot of odd-man rushes, but he held his own. He finished with 35 saves.
“I keep saying, both goalies are important and we need both goalies,” Berube said. “Confidence is a lot of everybody’s play. It’s a big thing in the game. When you’re confident, you’re going to play a lot better and I think that game really helped him gain some confidence and I thought that first period (against the Islanders), he made some real key saves in that game and I thought he fed off that really well and closed it out for us.”
At least one thing went against the grain. The Blues had their string of six straight games where they had scored first end when Rasmus Asplund deflected a shot by Henri Jokiharju that went under Binnington’s glove.
But by the end of the period, the Blues had gotten even, thanks to two penalties in quick succession on Buffalo. First, Cody Eakin was called for hooking David Perron with 1:52 to go in the period and then defenseman Owen Power, the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft and playing in his second NHL game, was called for cross checking with 54.5 seconds to go, giving the Blues a five-on-three advantage for 1:02.
Two-man advantages are no longer the nightmare scenarios for the Blues they once were and 31 seconds in, Perron one-timed a pass from Torey Krug for his 25th goal of the season and a tie game.
The Blues still had 90 seconds of power play to go, and 17 seconds into the second period, Brandon Saad leapt to keep the puck in Sabres end, and a short while later, got the puck back from Robert Thomas to make it 2-1. The assist extended Thomas’ point streak to 11 games, one shy of the team record for a player under 22 held by Bernie Federko.
A nice save by Binnington and an ensuing goal-mouth scramble led to a replay review with 15:46 to go in the second period that confirmed no goal, and then three seconds later, Buffalo scored for sure on a shot by Alex Tuch that came off a pass from Power for his first NHL point.
Tarasenko put the Blues back in the lead with 12:42 to go in the second, shooting into an open net after goalie Craig Anderson had moved to his right and Pavel Buchnevich brought it back to his left.
Buffalo had three prime scoring chances in the ensuing two minutes, one that went off the post, one that was shot high on a breakaway by Peyton Krebs and then a save by Binnington on a good chance for Tuch.
That set the scene for Tarasenko to score again, maneuvering around a Sabres defender for a breakaway and then scoring on Anderson, even though he didn’t get the final touch on the puck he thought he was going to need to put it in.
Buchnevich scored his 26th goal of the season in the third period to extend the lead and give the Blues some security. Tarasenko sealed it with an empty-net goal with 2:28 to play.
