A promising start turned into another frustrating finish, as the Blues blew a 3-0 lead, scored late to get even but then lost in overtime, 5-4, to Vegas on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The loss is the third in a row for the Blues on the heels of their eight-game win streak and they came away with just one point in the three games on their trip west. In the three games, the Blues allowed 15 goals. They now come back to St. Louis for a five-game homestand that starts on Tuesday against San Jose.
"We sat back too much and it killed us," center Ryan O'Reilly said. "They came at us in waves. ... To get a point from where we were is good, but from where we started, that's one point we let slip. Want to be better with that."
"We made mistakes," said David Perron. "They're a pressure team and they put on the pressure ... we got a big point, it would have been nice to get the second one."
Chandler Stephenson scored on a breakaway 3:01 into overtime, stealing the puck from Robert Thomas and beating Jake Allen. It was the first three-goal comeback win in Vegas history and the first time the Blues had blown a three-goal lead this season.
"Would have liked him to take it back out," coach Craig Berube said. "It's kind of a quick play. He could have taken it back and protected it maybe."
The Blues fell behind 4-3 midway through the third on a goal by Reilly Smith after the Blues were slow to get to a puck in their own end. Perron scored his 17th goal of the season, on a power play with 7:10 to play in the third, to tie the game. The Blues had to kill a late penalty on Thomas that spilled over into overtime.
The Blues played without defenseman Colton Parayko, who didn't practice Friday and who took pregame warmups, but then it was decided he couldn't go. Jake Walman, the team's third-round pick in the 2014 drat, made his NHL debut in Parayko's place and played 11:04 with one shot on goal.
Two former Blues, Ryan Reaves and Paul Stastny, scored less than 2 { minutes apart for Vegas in the second period to cut the Blues lead from 3-0 to 3-2 after two periods.
The Blues had been dominating the game at the time, holding Vegas to only shot on goal in the first 11 minutes of the period and the Blues almost had two more goals, with Marc-Andre Fleury stopping excellent chances for Vince Dunn and Jaden Schwartz.
Then Reaves and Stastny scored, both from in close to the net, to make it a one-goal game. The game-tying goal from Nicolas Roy also came from in front of the net.
"I'm not letting anybody off the hook," Berube said. "You've got to be harder, the goalie, everybody. You've got to be harder. It doesn't need to happen.
"I think that they got that (first) goal and that gave them momentum. We come out in the second period, have three real good chances, and don't, had a couple on the line. That's probably the game. We let them score a couple goals around our net in tight. It's got to be better. We came up on the short end but we got a point."
"It wasn't too much of a statement the first 28 minutes," Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said, "but after that we played real good hockey. It was a battle back. You never say never in this league."
Four minutes before Reaves got Vegas on the board, the Blues had a power play after a scrum behind Fleury, but they couldn't generate much in the way of chances.
After two unimpressive losses, Berube gave his lineup a shake and, in the first period, it looked like he found a winner.
The Blues scored three times in the first period to take a 3-0 lead on the Golden Knights. Alex Pietrangelo, Jaden Schwartz and Oskar Sundqvist scored for the Blues,
Allen, who started the Arizona game, made the start instead of Jordan Binnington, who gave up seven goals to Colorado on Thursday.
Pietrangelo started the scoring with a power-play goal, firing the puck Fleury from the slot. It's the 12th goal of the season for Pietrangelo and his fifth on the power play.
Schwartz followed with his 14th goal of the season on a play that started with Allen playing the puck out to Ryan O'Reilly, who got it to David Perron, who set up Schwartz on an odd-man rush and he beat Fleury.
Sundqvist made it 3-0 when he got to a loose puck in front of the net and swatted it in. Sundqvist has 10 goals this season.
Berube broke up Schwartz and Brayden Schenn, one of the foundational pairs on the team, putting Schwartz with O'Reilly and Perron and Schenn with Robert Thomas and Tyler Bozak. He also reunited the line of Sundqvist, Ivan Barbashev and Alexander Steen which excelled last season.
