Vladimir Tarasenko does not like talking about himself, but Alex Pietrangelo does not mind talking about his teammate.
Tarasenko on Monday had a goal and two assists to help the St Louis Blues beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-1, snapping a four-game losing streak.
“When he gets going, he’s hard to handle,” Pietrangelo said about Tarasenko. “His game is more well-rounded than you think. He doesn’t get enough credit.”
Photo: AP
For his part, Tarasenko wanted to talk about how big the win was for the struggling Blues.
“We played for 60 minutes and it was a pretty good effort by everybody,” Tarasenko said. “This was a big game for us. They are the best team in the league right now. This was a good test. They have a lot of skilled players. I think we played really well.”
Blues coach Craig Berube liked what he saw from this club.
“This was our best game of the season,” Berube said. “We just worked. We were stingy.”
Brayden Schenn and David Perron also scored for the defending Stanley Cup champions, who went into the game with their longest skid since April 4 last year.
Jordan Binnington finished with 17 saves.
“We played a great game. That’s how we need to play every night,” Binnington said. “Hopefully, we can build off this.”
Nathan MacKinnon scored for Colorado, who were the only team in the NHL without a regulation loss and fell to 7-1-1.
Philipp Grubauer stopped 22 shots.
“It looked like we ran out of gas here tonight,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “They were the hungrier team and when they’re on the puck first with their numbers all the time, it just makes it difficult if you don’t have the legs.”
The Blues swept the four-game series last season and their latest win moved them to 8-1-0 in their past nine home games against Colorado. The Blues are 15-3-0 over the Avalanche at home since April 5, 2011.
MacKinnon became the first player in Avalanche history to score at least a point in the each of the team’s first nine games in consecutive seasons.
He tied the mark to start one season, set previously by John-Michael Liles in 2010-2011, and matched by MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen last season.
MacKinnon became the fifth player in history with a season-opening point streak of at least nine games in consecutive seasons, joining Wayne Gretzky, Charlie Simmer, Guy Lafleur and Rod Gilbert.
However, that was all the offense Colorado generated on the night.
It was the lowest scoring game and lowest shot total (18) this season for the Avalanche.
“To be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered if they had their ‘A’ game or their ‘C’ game tonight,” Gabriel Landeskog said. “We just weren’t good enough and on a night like tonight we’re not going to beat too many teams.”
Colorado forward Ratanen left the game in the second period with a lower-body injury. He did not return.
“As far as I know, we’ll just have to re-evaluate him in the morning and see what happens,” Bednar said.
Elsewhere, the Blue Jackets mastered the Maple Leafs 4-3 in overtime, the Flyers flayed the Golden Knights 6-2 and the Stars slayed the Senators 2-1.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier