ST. LOUIS _ The Blues started the day at the bottom of the NHL standings, with the fewest points in the league but they climbed out with a 5-2 win over Washington at Enterprise Center on Thursday.
Playing without forward Vladimir Tarasenko, who was out sick, the Blues had their highest-scoring game since Nov. 23, when they beat Nashville, 6-2, in Craig Berube's second game as interim coach. The goals came from an eclectic bunch, only one of whom resides on the team's top two lines: Robert Thomas, who had been promoted to the Schenn-Schwartz line, Colton Parayko, Oskar Sundqvist, Alex Pietrangelo and Tyler Bozak. The Blues chose to go with seven defensemen with Carl Gunnarsson healthy again and the defenseman, in just his eighth game of the season, was on the ice for four of the five goals.
Sundqvist put the Blues ahead with 3:27 to go in the second period when he left his feet to backhand in a puck to the side of the net after a shot by Pietrangelo had deflected off Ivan Barbashev. For Sundqvist, it was seventh goal of the season _ he had two total coming into the season in 70 games _ as his amazing offensive jump continued.
Parayko had gotten the Blues even just over 4 minutes before on his eighth goal of the season as he closed in on his career high of nine set in his rookie season. Ryan O'Reilly threaded a nice pass through the crease to Parayko, who had sneaked in to Braden Holtby's right and scored from one knee. O'Reilly, named to the All-Star team on Wednesday, has 21 assists.
The Blues had fallen behind 2-1 when Washington's Brett Connolly put in a rebound of his own miss that Jake Allen couldn't control. The Blues had taken a 1-0 lead 4 minutes into the game when Thomas tipped in a Robert Bortuzzo shot and Washington had tied it with 4:26 to go when Alex Ovechkin scored from the faceoff dot to Allen's left.
The Blues also looked to settle a score from the preseason, when Washington's Tom Wilson had leveled Sundqvist had knocked him out of eight games with a concussion, shoulder injury and facial cuts. Bortuzzo slugged it out with Wilson in the second period, first knocking off his helmet, then landing a solid right to his face. Later in the period, Wilson and Pietrangelo got tangled up and Pietrangelo took a poke at Wilson. Both got roughing penalties.
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