ST. LOUIS — A lot of the players on the ice Saturday were unfamiliar to Blues fandom at the start of the season. Many were in the American Hockey League for much of this season. Little matter. The season and the train rolls on.
Regardless of who’s donning the Blue Note these days, they’re finding a way to win On Saturday, it was a 4-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens at Enterprise Center, the Blues’ seventh straight at home this season.
They got goals from Dakota Joshua, Pavel Buchnevich, Ivan Barbashev and Torey Krug. Solid goaltending from Charlie Lindgren, who beat his former team. And improved to 15-8-4 for the season and 5-1-1 in their last seven games.
In short, they treated the visiting Canadiens — now 6-20-3 — as if they were one of the worst teams in the National Hockey League. Which they are.
A four-game homestand concludes Sunday against Anaheim.
The Blues got an early lead and controlled play, and possession time, for most of the first period.
Just 63 seconds into the opening period, red-hot Buchnevich continued his, well, red-hot ways with his 11th goal of the season — tying him for the team lead with Brandon Saad. Buchnevich and Vladimir Tarasenko played catch in front of the Montreal net, somehow left alone up front. The result was Buchnevich’s seventh goal in the past nine games and a 1-0 lead.
In goal for Montreal was none other than Jake Allen, playing in Enterprise Center for the first time since the Sept. 2, 2020, trade that sent him to the Canadiens. During the game’s first television timeout, a video tribute to Allen was played on the Jumbotron and he received a standing ovation from the crowd at Enterprise.
The Blues were playing with a full roster for the first time in three games and with 12 forwards for the first time in eight games, thanks to the arrival of yet another player from the Springfield Thunderbirds — Matthew Peca.
There are so many T-Birds on the on the Blues’ roster these days, due to a combination of injuries and COVID, that the Blues’ fourth line of Logan Brown-Joshua-Peca was an all-Springfield affair.
Which allowed Nathan Walker, he of the hat trick Thursday against the Detroit Red Wings, the luxury of playing up on a third line centered by Brayden Schenn. With Lindgren once again in goal, there were times — when the Blues’ third D-pairing was on the ice — that the only non-Springfield player on ice was defenseman Robert Bortuzzo.
The “Springfield Line” of Brown-Joshua-Peca gave Lindgren and the Blues a little cushion in the second period. During a sequence in which the fourth-liners got all kinds of zone time, Brown triggered an impromptu 2-on-1, waiting patiently before dishing to Joshua on the right.
With some surprising wiggle in his game, Joshua faked Allen in the crease and then deposited his second NHL goal — and first of the season — to make it a 2-0 Blues lead at the 8:52 mark of the second. It was the first NHL goal where Joshua actually used his stick. On March 1 of last season, in his NHL debut, Joshua’s first NHL goal came in Anaheim on a puck that bounced off his chest and into the goal.
Peca got the secondary assist giving him his first point as a member of the Blues.
The Blues then got their power play going on a Barbashev goal at the 15:20 mark and a 3-0 lead. For Barbashev, it was his 10th goal of the season, and his sixth goal in his last eight games. Barbashev has reached double figures in goals only two other times in his NHL career, and his career-high of 14 — achieved during the Stanley Cup season — appears well within reach.
Barbashev has been getting power-play time recently only because of the injury to David Perron, and he’s been making the most of it. It was his third power-play goal of the season. He already has scored a shorthanded goal, empty-net goal and at even strength.
Tarasenko made the play, with a room-service pass to Barbashev in the slot — or “bumper” position — on the power play.
Montreal, meanwhile, couldn’t get much of anything going. The Canadiens managed only 12 shots on goal through two periods, and didn’t get their first shot on goal of the second period until just 7:31 remained.
Their best chance came after a Jordan Kyrou turnover in the St. Louis zone, led to a mini-breakaway and clean look by former Blue Mike Hoffman. But Lindgren made the save to keep Montreal off the scoreboard.
Lindgren has two career shutouts on his resume, both as a member of the Canadiens during the 2017-18 season. But his hopes for shutout No. 3 went awry early in the third period, and it was partly of his own doing.
Lindgren had trouble clearing out the puck behind his goal, and that perpetuated a Montreal possession that led to a goal by Alexander Romanov less than two minutes into the third period, making it a 3-1 game.
But before the Canadiens could think about making it a game, the Blues’ power play cranked it up again. With Hoffman off for hooking Joshua, Krug got the puck on the left point with nothing by open space around him. He took a couple strides toward the goal and blistered a high shot past Allen’s glove to make it a 4-1 game with 9:44 left to play
Kyrou was not out on that power play. In fact he wasn’t on the bench. He was shaken up on the first period, but kept playing at least through the second period.
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