ST. LOUIS _ Holiday greetings from the St. Louis Blues. You won't see them again at Enterprise Center until after Christmas, but they delivered a nice little Christmas card to their fans Wednesday.
The Blues made it interesting, unsuccessfully challenging for goalie interference after a Ryan Nugent-Hopkins goal with 1:50 left. That put the league's most potent power on the ice for the rest of the game.
But the Blues held on for a 2-1 victory, giving them four consecutive victories and boosting their Western Conference-leading record to 22-8-6.
Similar to Tuesday's game against Colorado, the Blues didn't sit on their heels at the start of the third period.
Instead of nursing a 1-0 lead, they built on it. With a line change in progress, Ryan O'Reilly made a picture perfect behind-the-back feed from behind the net to MacKenzie MacEachern, who was driving the net and slammed it in at the 6:23 mark.
It was MacEachern's sixth goal of the season, O'Reilly's 26th assist, and it gave the Blues a 2-0 lead.
In the second period, Brayden Schenn did a little cherry picking, lagging behind on defense. It paid off when Schenn was sprung on a breakaway on a pass from Vince Dunn.
Schenn whipped a shot past the glove side of Edmonton Oilers goalie Mikko Koskinen at the 8:04 mark of the period at Enterprise Center. It was Schenn's 15th goal of the season, tying him for the team lead with David Perron, and gave the Blues a 1-0 lead which they would take into the third period.
The Blues outshot the Oilers 19-8 in the period, and held a 34-18 advantage after two. Only some strong work by Koskinen kept the Oilers in the game.
With the crowd at Enterprise in a festive holiday mood, Troy Brouwer nearly gave the Blues an early lead when he clanged one off the near post just 2 { minutes into the contest.
Brouwer was a late replacement for Tyler Bozak, who was scratched because of illness.
Not long after Brouwer's shot, the Blues got an early power play when Connor McDavid was sent off for hooking Justin Faulk at the 3:56 mark. The Blues got four shots on goal against an Edmonton penalty kill unit that is tops in the league on the road, but couldn't crack Koskinen.
Edmonton got the next two power plays, both coming late in the period. The Oilers have the league's top power play overall, with a 31.5% success rate. But the Blues held them off, although 1:24 of the second Blues penalty _ on Alex Pietrangelo for slashing _ carried over to the second period.
