ST. LOUIS (AP) Jaden Schwartz has been putting on a show for St. Louis Blues fans all season.
On Saturday night, he put one on for his parents.
Schwartz scored twice and Kyle Brodziak added a short-handed goal in the St. Louis Blues’ 6-3 victory over the Minnesota Wild.
”It’s really nice having them here,” Schwartz said about his parents. ”They love visiting. They’re here for a week and they made some good meals and I tried to reward them with a couple of goals.”
Paul Stastny, Dmitrij Jaskin and Sammy Blais also scored for the Blues, who jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first period. Jake Allen made 22 saves to help St. Louis win for the third time in four games and improve its points total to an NHL-best 35 at 17-6-1.
Charlie Coyle, Zack Mitchell and Eric Staal scored for the Wild. Devan Dubnyk made 34 saves. He’s 6-13-2 in his career against St. Louis.
Schwartz’s second goal with 8:24 left in the third thwarted a mounting Minnesota rally. Colton Parayko found Schwartz all alone in the crease and Schwartz had enough time to wait out Dubnyk for the power play goal to make it 5-3 Blues.
”I knew there was a battle going on in the corner,” Schwartz said. ”My first thought was shoot, but I didn’t quite like where the puck was, so I just decided to grab it and hold on to it and just try to outwait the goalie.”
Schwartz leapfrogged Vladimir Tarasenko for the team lead with 13 goals. He has 32 points and is a plus-31.
Blais scored on a power play three minutes later for his first NHL goal.
”I played my game,” Blais said. ”I was good on the forecheck, I finished my hits and it’s nice to have an effort goal at the end. I’m just going to try to keep going like that.”
Stastny’s power-play goal gave the Blues a 1-0 lead at 6:15 in the first period. It was Stastny’s second goal in four games.
Jaskin made it 2-0 five minutes later, a product of an intense fore-check that forced Wild defenseman Kyle Quincey to try and throw the puck out of the Minnesota zone, but it bounced off of Chris Thorburn right to Jaskin’s stick.
”We did a better job of hanging onto the puck and allowing ourselves to get in better position,” Blues coach Mike Yeo said. ”When you have that kind of sustained zone time that’s when things start to open up and I think we saw that with a couple of those goals.”
Schwartz deflected Vladimir Tarasenko’s pass to make it 3-0 late in the first. The duo have combined for 10 points in their last three games.
”They get a power play goal and that’s fine and the second one gets things going in there and when you’re in a tough building on the road against a real good hockey then they kind of roll a little bit and it’s going to take a while to kind of weather that,” Dubnyk said. ”We’ve just got to do a better job not getting down 3-0. It’s everyone including myself.”
Coyle took advantage of a Blais giveaway to score a short-handed goal with 4:58 left in the second period. It was the first of the season for Coyle, who was playing in just his seventh game after coming back from a broken fibula.
Brodziak regained the three-goal lead for the Blues at 2:09 of the third period.
Mitchell tipped in Daniel Winnik’s feed at 3:31 to cut the Blues’ lead to 4-2.
Staal made it a one-goal game after he banged home his own rebound at 8:52. Staal has nine points in his last seven games.
”I mean when you try to chase the game, it’s really difficult,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. ”Because when you make a mistake you’ve got to press and they take advantage of it and it’s usually in the net.
NOTES: F Wild forward Chris Stewart played for the Blues in parts of four seasons (2010-14). … Yeo coached the Wild in parts of five seasons (2011-2016). … The Wild scratched D Mike Reilly. … The Blues scratched D Carl Gunnarsson, D Nate Prosser and L Magnus Paajarvi.
UP NEXT
Wild: At Winnipeg on Monday night.
Blues: Host Anaheim on Wednesday night.
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