The St. Louis Blues were saying all the right things going into their matchup against their former coach, Craig Berube, and the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday.
Nobody was going to feel sorry for the Blues losing their top-line center, Robert Thomas to a fractured right ankle, for up to six weeks or longer, and there would be no pity party for them.
It just means going through some adverse situations and everybody pulling on the same rope, which everyone spoke of prior to departing on this current four-game road trip, including Thursday at Scotiabank Arena against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The entire group got the message, and led by Jordan Binnington’s 40 saves, and newcomers Dylan Holloway (two goals), Philip Broberg and Alexandre Texier accounting for four of the five goals scored by new Blues, they collected their most impressive win of the season, 5-1, against the Maple Leafs.
The Blues (5-3) were going to need some of their top-end skaters to pick up the slack Thomas left behind in the scoring department, and even though Jordan Kyrou, who was THS’s player to watch tonight, and Pavel Buchnevich didn’t score, they each had two assists and were factors in the offensive zone, and Jake Neighbours scored for the third time in four games.
“He’s a team-first player right now,” Blues coach Drew Banister said of Kyrou. “He’s playing team hockey. I was impressed with his game last game. I just think he’s playing team hockey. He wants to win hockey games and he’s doing whatever it takes right now to win hockey games.”
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The Blues did it with workmanlike performance, chipping and winning puck battles, forechecking with precision and at the other end, the ones Binnington saw and stopped, he did, but the ones that didn’t get through, the Blues blocked 23 shots, including seven by Colton Parayko.
“No question our guys came to play,” Bannister said. “The effort for 60 minutes, details in our game, willingness to block shots.
“When you come on the road against a team like this, you’ve got to be willing to do the things to have success and we had 20 guys doing those things correctly.”
The only area the Blues were grossly outplayed was in the dot, winning only 19 of 60 face-offs for the game (32 percent), but it was expected to take a dip with Thomas, who was second in the NHL in face-off winning percentage (62.6 percent) behind only Edmonton Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl (66.4 percent).
But the return of Oskar Sundqvist, who played his first game since tearing his right ACL March 25 last season against the Vegas Golden Knights, played huge dividends. Alexey Toropchenko returned after missing two games and provided great forechecking and jump in the game.
The Blues didn’t try to run-and-gun with a team that would have blown them off the ice had they tried. They just grabbed their lunchpails and simply went to work.
“It looks like he didn’t miss a beat, right,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said of Sundqvist. “Just right from the get-go, winning battles, hard on the forecheck, hard in his own end, tough to play against. One thing, ‘Sunny’ is always a gamer and he showed up tonight and gave us a good boost.”
Kyrou made his mark quickly when he used his speed and cutback ability to set up Broberg’s second goal and seventh point in eight games, beating Dardenne Prairie’s Joseph Woll using Buchnevich and Auston Matthews as a screen at 4:07 of the first period for a 1-0 lead.
“I thought he was unreal. He was humming,” Holloway said of Kyrou. “That first goal, I loved the cutbacks. His feet were moving all night. You could tell he was pretty juiced up playing in his hometown.”
Holloway made it 2-0 scoring the Blues’ first power-play goal since Oct. 11 against the Vegas Golden Knights, and it was the work along the boards by Sundqvist and Texier that freed up a puck for Brandon Saad, who found Holloway all alone in front of Woll at 10:31 of the first.
The Blues carried that lead into the second and had to expect a push from the Leafs and they got one. Toronto made it 2-1 at 6:20 when Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored from the top of the right circle, a shot that deflected off Blues defenseman P.O. Joseph. Binnington initially thought it was played with a high stick but didn’t realize it was his own guy.
But the answer to that goal was the play of the game. Texier made it 3-1 just 1:38 after Ekman-Larsson’s goal on another forechecking effort by Kyrou and Buchnevich to win a puck below the goal line before Kyrou found Texier for his first as a Blue, and it was a beauty.
Meanwhile Binnington was busy making 16 saves in the period to give the Blues a multi-goal lead heading into the third, and they managed the game well in the early going and for all intents and purposes, put it to rest when Neighbours, who signed a two-year, $7.5 million extension just two days ago, made it 4-1 at 3:45 off another shot-blocking effort and rush up the ice, beating Woll from the right circle.
And Holloway put the game away for good when he iced it with an empty-netter at 16:42, after the Blues went a perfect 4-for-4 on the penalty kill.
Hear what Binnington, Holloway and Bannister after the game:
The Leafs, who were coming off a 6-2 loss against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday, were hoping to have a good showing for Berube, who was coaching his first game against the Blues since being fired Dec. 12, 2023. But it wasn’t in the cards.
