The St. Louis Blues opened up preseason action with a split of split-squad matchups with the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Blue Notes won in St. Louis by the final of 5-2 while falling in Columbus 3-1.
In Columbus,
The Blues experimented with the 3-on-3 version of the game at Nationwide Arena, one of the designated games from the NHL.
Games go to 3-on-3 overtime hockey no matter what the score is in those instances.
And what did the Blues think of their first taste of what should drastically reduce the amount of shootout games during the regular season?
There wasn’t a tremendous amount of time to dissect it, as Ryan Johansen scored 39 seconds into the overtime period to end the game for the Blue Jackets, who won the regulation game 3-1.
Dmitrij Jaskin scored a third-period goal for the Blues, who outshot the Jackets 36-19 in the game.
The Blues were thwarted by Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who stopped all 24 shots faced in two periods before being replaced by Forsberg. Jake Allen played the first period and stopped three of four shots. Binnington made 14 saves in relief and allowed one goal.
While in St. Louis,
Alexander Steen scored the tie-breaking goal in the second period to help the St. Louis Blues to a 5-2 win against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Scottrade Center on Tuesday.
The teams traded goals in the first period; Paul Stastny scored for St. Louis at 10:46, and Boone Jenner tied the game 1-1 at 14:11.
Justin Falk scored at 6:20 of the second period before Vladimir Tarasenko scored on the power play and Steen scored at 15:27 to give the Blues a 3-2 lead.
Alex Pietrangelo’s power-play goal at 4:17 of the third and Spencer Asuchak’s goal at 10:24 finished the scoring.
Tarasenko, Steen and defenseman Colton Parayko each had two assists.
Curtis McElhinney played the entire game for the Blue Jackets and made 31 saves on 36 shots.
Brian Elliott made eight saves on nine shots in the first period for the Blues before being replaced by Pheonix Copley, who made 13 saves in 39:48.
Columbus was 0-for-1 on the power play; St. Louis was 2-for-3.
Louis was 2-for-3.