The St. Louis Blues snapped a two-game losing streak Monday night by beating the Detroit Red Wings 4-1 at Joe Louis Arena. The Blues got back to old fashioned forechecking and goals from three defensemen and another from the fourth line to get back to their winning ways.
Magnus Paajarvi opened the scoring to give the Blues a 1-0 lead in the first. Detroit tied the game in the final minute of the period on a 5-on-3 powerplay with a goal from Gustav Nyquist. Defensemen Barret Jackman and Kevin Shattenkirk scored 1:20 apart for the Blues early in the second period and then early in the third, Jay Bouwmeester gave St. Louis their three-goal advantage at 2:14.
“The first two periods we played the way we had to play,” St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock said. “I thought the scoring chances might’ve been even in the first two periods, but the zone time was in our favor and that’s our game. Our game plan was more based on volume and zone time and wearing people out, and that’s what we accomplished in the first two periods.”
The Blues did kill off five of Detroit’s six powerplays and outshot the Wings 39-23.
