Pavel Buchnevich scored a hat trick and Jordan Binnington earned his 15th career shutout as the host St. Louis Blues defeated the New York Islanders 4-0 on Thursday night.
Brandon Saad also scored for the Blues, who won for the ninth time in the last 13 games. Robert Thomas had three assists and Jordan Kyrou had two. Binnington made 38 saves.
The Blues were outshot 38-25, but they scored three times in a 32-second span of the second period to gain control of the game.
Semyon Varlamov allowed three goals on 24 shots for the Islanders, who are just 4-7-4 in their last 15 games.
Each team killed off two penalties during the scoreless first period.
The Islanders earned the best opportunity on Kyle Palmieri’s jam shot midway through the period. His shot hit the left post, then hit Binnington’s extended skate. Palmieri took a second swing at the puck and sent it along the goal line behind Binnington and out the other side of the crease.
The Islanders applied heavy pressure to start the second period. Their offensive flurry was highlighted by Anders Lee’s clean break-in right down the middle 65 seconds in. Binnington stopped Lee, then the Blues responded with the fastest three-goal burst in team history.
Saad started the sequence with a power-play goal, converting a cross-ice pass from Oskar Sundqvist. Buchnevich made it 2-0 just 7 seconds later by driving toward the left post to redirect Thomas’ cross-crease pass.
Then Buchnevich made it 3-0 at 5:10 with a snap shot from the right circle off Kyrou’s pass from the middle.
Later in the period, Binnington extended to his left to deny Palmieri on another power play to keep the Islanders scoreless.
With the teams playing 4-on-4, Varlamov left the ice for an extra attacker. After Islanders defenseman Noah Dobson hit the post, Buchnevich backhanded an empty-netter from his side of the red line to make it 4-0 with 10:39 left.
–Field Level Media