ST. LOUIS _ With an offensive explosion not seen in these parts this season, the offense-shy Blues burst out with five goals on Sunday in a romp over the Colorado Avalanche.
It was also a day of breakthroughs for the Blues.
Robby Fabbri and Jori Lehtera scored their first goals of the season, Carl Gunnarsson, Kyle Brodziak and Ryan Reaves got their first points and the Blues scored as many goals as they have in the past four games combined in a 5-1 win over the Avalanche at Scottrade Center.
Kevin Shattenkirk had three assists. It looked once again like Alexander Steen had scored his 200th career goal and 150th with the Blues, but after the goal was initially credited to him, the goal was changed to Jaden Schwartz. It's the second time it looked like Steen had gotten No. 200 only to see it taken away; in Dallas, he scored but the goal was nullified on review for goalie interference.
It's only one game, but it was a promising game for the Blues who dominated from the start but saw the Avalanche briefly threaten in the second period after cutting the lead to 2-1. But goals by Schwartz on the power play, who tipped in Steen's shot, Scottie Upshall and then David Perron with 54 seconds to go in the period put the game away and the gave the team consecutive wins for the first time since winning the first three games of the season.
"Our first period today was the best period we played all year," coach Ken Hitchcock said. "Just our puck pursuit, our tenacity, our secondary forecheck, it was excellent. The best period we've played. It looked like a team that was right on the mark. We could have really put it away in the first period, but man, we did a lot of things that when you're drawing up the game plan, that's exactly what you want. I was really happy with the way we played in the first period."
The Blues, who beat Columbus in overtime on Saturday night, got off to a quick start. Steen had a breakaway 30 seconds in that was denied but then one of the team's most anticipated goals followed about a minute later. Fabbri, whose sophomore season was off to a slow start with no goals in 12 games, took a pass from Dmitrij Jaskin on a two-on-one and finished it off. After the goal, Fabbri leapt into Jaskin's arms behind the goal in a jubilant celebration.
Just under two minutes later, Lehtera got his first goal of the season off an assist from Gunnarsson. He, too, was happy.
It looked like the Blues might quickly blow the game open when they went on a power play, but they didn't score and reverted to their old ways, with lots of shots and no goals. With 13:22 in the second, Colorado's Francois Beauchemin cut the lead in half, shooting through a forest of legs and getting a deflection fro Matt Duchene to beat Allen, who had no chance to see the puck.
That amped up the pressure but the three goals in the final six minutes of the second gave the Blues their first one-sided win of the season. Every other win was either by one goal or was made bigger by late empty-net goals.
Defenseman Joel Edmundson left the game in the first period after being checked hard into the boards by Rene Bourque and did not return because of what the team called an upper-body injury.
Steen and Kyle Brodziak both had fights, giving the Blues five fights in the past three games after having none in the first 10 games.
