A two-point night by Paul Stastny helped lift the St. Louis Blues to their fifth consecutive victory against the Edmonton Oilers. Stastny set up the game's first goal and scored the winner with 5:40 left in regulation in a 2-1 victory against the Oilers at Rexall Place on Saturday. Dmitrij Jaskin also scored for St. Louis (40-18-4), which is at the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday in the third of a five-game road trip. Stastny worked his way around Oilers defenseman Mark Fayne and fired a backhand shot through the pads of goaltender Ben Scrivens to give the Blues the win. Stastny has three points in his past two games. Elliott made 21 saves for St. Louis; Scrivens finished with 25 saves. Justin Schultz scored for Edmonton (18-35-10), which has lost three of its past four games. Jaskin scored 12:11 into the first period to give St. Louis a 1-0 lead. Blues center Patrik Berglund stripped the puck from Derek Roy at the Oilers' blue line, then spotted Stastny in the left circle. Stastny slid a pass to Jaskin, who one-timed it past Scrivens for his 10th goal of the season. Oilers right wing Iiro Pakarinen sustained a knee injury in the first period while attempting a hit on David Backes along the end boards; he didn't return, leaving Edmonton short a forward. Backes avoided the hit and Pakarinen slammed into the boards. Schultz tied the game at 6:31 in the second period when he took a drop pass from Eberle and snapped a shot past Elliott for his fifth goal of the season and first in 13 games. Nail Yakupov had a good opportunity to put Edmonton up later in the period. He took a pass at the side of the net but fired wide on a one-timer. Later in the period, Blues forward Ryan Reaves hit the post with his attempt from in close on an odd-man rush. In the third, Scrivens made a number of key saves to keep the game tied. He stopped Jori Lehtera on the power play, making a pad save on the Blues' center, who was left unattended in the slot. Scrivens also turned away Vladimir Tarasenko on the same power play before making a spectacular glove save on Stastny during a second power play.
But in the end, the Blues were just too much.
Blues Quotes
Dmitrij Jaskin: "Paul was great as always, he can find you anywhere, so you have to be happy for him. We didn't have a good first period, but the other two periods, we were really strong in their zone. We didn't make any mistakes, made strong plays inside our blue line and inside their blue line. We checked well and we got chances after that."Paul Stastny: "You have those nights where the puck always finds you. Both our wingers were hungry for the puck today and so was I, and when you have that combination, good things happen. Sometimes it just clicks and sometimes you need a line to step up. Obviously, our goaltender played well especially at the end. Brian Elliott made a couple of big saves and we found a way to win it in regulation."
Brian Elliott: "They have a lot of skill, but the way we play and the personnel and the skill we have, our hard work and structure should take care of business a little easier than that. We made it a little harder on ourselves than it needed to be, but in this league, anyone can win on any night. It was an unbelievable goal by [Stastny] to kind of seal it and a couple of blocked shots at the end. Guys were doing the things at the end to make us successful."
Ken Hitchcock: "From the 10-minute mark of the second period we really started to amp it up and started to play very well. I thought the last 30 minutes we played very well. I'm concerned about our slow starts, I'm concerned about the way we play in our starts. We don't look like we get to our game near soon enough, and we're going to get challenged in the next three or four hockey games and we're going to have to find a way to get into our game a little bit earlier."
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