ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jaccob Slavin scored the winning goal 7:53 into the third period and Jake Guentzel added a pair of empty-netters, lifting the Carolina Hurricanes to a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues on Friday night.
“It was four on four and Sebastian (Aho) was in the middle with the puck,” Slavin said. “He hit me right on the tape and I just had to touch it. That’s about it.”
Slavin scored when both teams were playing with four men as Carolina won its fourth game in a row and sixth in its last seven.
“I thought we had some real good individual efforts and our goaltending was great,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “We had some real high-end plays at crucial times. We did enough to get the win.”
Seth Jarvis and Jordan Martinook also scored for Carolina and Frederik Andersen made 29 saves to improve to 13-2-0.
Jordan Kyrou and Zack Bolduc scored for St. Louis and Jordan Binnington made 37 saves.
“Certainly I can’t fault the effort. Certainly the effort was here from our group tonight,” interim Blues coach Drew Bannister said. “We made three mistakes on the first three goals and they made us pay, and that’s what good hockey teams do. We certainly created enough offense to grab a lead or separate a little bit more but we failed to kind of cash in on some of the chances that we had.”
The Blues had won two in a row but with Vegas’ 7-2 victory over Minnesota later Friday, St. Louis was eliminated from playoff contention.
“Us guys in here, no matter what the odds are, kind of where we were at in the season, we never gave up and we won’t give up,” Robert Thomas said. “That’s what I’m taking away from this.”
Guentzel’s two empty-net goals gave him 30 for the season.
“Listen, they were empty netters but they were a big part of the game still,” Brind’Amour said. “The first one anyway. He knows how to make plays.”
Kyrou scored his 30th of the season on the power play at 5:31 of the second period when he wristed in a shot from the top of the right faceoff circle after a pass from Thomas, who assisted on both St. Louis goals.
Kyrou has consecutive 30-goal seasons for the first time in his career. Since 2000, only four other Blues have done so — Vladimir Tarasenko, Brad Boyes, Keith Tkachuk and Pavol Demitra.
Thomas now has 60 assists. He is the first Blues player to have 60 or more assists in a season since 1993-94 when Craig Janney had 68.
“It’s nice. I would have rather been playing in the playoffs,” Thomas said. “You never know what’s going to happen here, but I think that’s my main priority.”
Jarvis scored his 31st goal at 8:07 when his wrist shot from the slot beat Binnington.
Bolduc scored late in the first period for a 1-0 lead. Nick Leddy fed Bolduc, who was alone in the right faceoff circle and hit a slap shot by Andersen. The 21-year-old Bolduc has scored in three consecutive games.
The Hurricanes made it 1-1 with 1:01 to play in the first on Martinook’s goal.
UP NEXT:
Hurricanes: Play at Chicago on Sunday night.
Blues: Host Seattle on Sunday afternoon.
