ST. LOUIS (AP) — David Perron, Brayden Schenn, and Jordan Kyrou each scored twice and the St. Louis Blues scored seven straight goals to erase a first-period deficit and beat the Minnesota Wild 7-3 on Thursday night.
Zach Sanford also scored Jordan Binnington made 17 saves. The Blues are locked into fourth place in the West Division, and will face Colorado in the first round of the playoffs.
“It was pretty obvious what was going on on the first period,” Perron said. “Like (former Blues coach Ken Hitchcock) used to say, ‘We just threw our sticks on the ice and played,’ and so we had talked about it. (Blues coach Craig Berube) brought it up as well.”
Nico Sturm, Marcus Foligno, and Ryan Suter scored and Kappo Kahkonen stopped 20 shots for Minnesota, set to face Vegas in the playoffs.
Kahkonen had won four in a row. He finished the season with a Wild rookie-record 16 victories.
“They just plug away,” Wild coach Dean Evason said about St. Louis. “They didn’t get rattled. Some teams might go away. They didn’t go away. They just kept pushing and we didn’t handle it well after that.”
Schenn scored his second goal of the game and 16th of the season with 5:57 remaining in the second period to put St. Louis ahead 4-3. It marked the fourth time this season the Blues scored four goals in a period.
“The effort obviously wasn’t there,” Schenn said about the first period. “Chief (Berube) kind of came in at the first intermission and said we’re not playing like that tonight. I think guys kind of owned up to it and went out and played harder.”
Perron scored his first goal of the game, tying it at 3 with 8:27 to go in the second period. He followed it up with a power play goal 5:50 into the third period to give him 19 goals and 58 points in 56 games. He became the first Blues player to average a point per game in the regular season since Pavol Demitra in 2002-03.
“He loves the rink, loves being around the guys,” Berube said. “That emotion and energy he takes on the ice night in and night out really fuels him and drives our team too.”
Kyrou scored his 13th and 14th goals later in the third period to effectively put the game out of reach.
RESTING UP
Blues LW Jaden Schwartz was scratched for rest and D Colton Parayko sat and is day-to-day with general wear and tear. … The Wild scratched Ds Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon, LWs Kirill Kaprisov and Kevin Fiala, and RW Mats Zucarello.
