Pavel Buchnevich scored the go-ahead goal with 3:39 to play, and the St. Louis Blues held on for a 3-1 win over the Minnesota Wild on Sunday evening in Saint Paul, Minn.
Logan Mailloux and Robert Thomas also scored for St. Louis, which bounced back from a loss against the New Jersey Devils one day earlier. The Blues won for the second time in their past three games.
Kirill Kaprizov scored the lone goal for Minnesota, which has dropped back-to-back contests.
Blues goaltender Joel Hofer stopped 22 of 23 shots to earn the victory. He improved to 14-11-3 on the season and moved within one win of 50 career victories.
Wild goaltender Filip Gustavsson turned aside 21 of 23 shots.
The game remained scoreless until late in the second period, when the teams traded goals within less than two minutes.
Kaprizov started the scoring on the power play with 3:51 to go in the second period. Matt Boldy transferred the puck from his backhand to his forehand and zipped a pass to Kaprizov, who tapped in a goal from the left side of the crease.
The sequence continued a hot streak for Minnesota’s top two scorers. Boldy extended his points streak to 10 consecutive games, and Kaprizov tallied a point for the seventh game in a row.
St. Louis evened the score at 1-all with 1:55 left in the second period. Mailloux fired a wrist shot from the top of the right circle past Gustavsson, who was screened by a Wild defenseman.
The shot marked Mailloux’s second goal in 45 games this season and his first since Dec. 12.
Buchnevich put the Blues on top 2-1 late in the third period. He got the puck without a defender in front of him and scored on a rising wrist shot from the right circle.
The Wild pulled Gustavsson for an extra skater in the closing minutes. Hofer withstood the pressure from Minnesota, and the Blues sealed the victory when Thomas scored an empty-net goal with 25 seconds to go.
–Field Level Media
