Schenn, Buchnevich score 3 goals each as Blues beat Avalanche 8-2

DENVER -- — Brayden Schenn and Pavel Buchnevich each scored three goals and the St. Louis Blues beat the Colorado Avalanche 8-2 on Saturday night.

Alexey Toropchenko and Torey Krug also scored for the Blues, and Jordan Binnington stopped 36 shots as St. Louis evened a loss to Colorado earlier this month.

Schenn got his fourth career hat trick — first since 2017 — and Buchnevich got his third. “Our offense has really changed or started to come around since the last time we were here in this building,” Schenn said. “We had some meetings and (were) kind of shown leaguewide trends and how to score and what really works and what we were doing that wasn’t right. So ever since then, the buy-in has been there and guys are getting rewarded for it.”

Mikko Rantanen and Jack Johnson scored for Colorado, which lost its second straight at home after opening the season 4-0 at Ball Arena. Alexandar Georgiev gave up six goals on 28 shots before being pulled early in the third period. Ivan Prosvetov came on and finished with 12 saves. Colorado coach Jared Bednar lit into his squad after the game, complaining the team was outplayed in virtually every aspect of the contest and appeared to “quit” in an ugly third period for the Avalanche. “There’s no other explanation for it," said Bednar, who remained one win shy of 300. "Poor execution and guys giving up all over the ice. How many breakaways did they have in the the third period? Three. Two of them end up in the back of our net.”

The Blues raced to a 4-0 lead before Rantanen's tip-in with 3:53 left in the second period.

“Special teams were really good,” Blues coach Craig Berube said. “Our (penalty) kill got a couple of shorties out of it, and scored a couple of big power-play goals in the third period. But overall I thought it was a good team effort, getting to an early start and scoring early. Our goaltender was really solid, too.” Schenn scored the first of his two goals in the opening period just 1:08 into the game, tipping-in a slap shot from just inside the blue line by Krug. He made it 2-0 with 1:07 left in the period when Brandon Saad drove past the net and left a drop pass to the trailing Schenn, who wristed the shot past Georgiev.

Krug beat Georgiev with a wrist shot off a centering pass from Robert Thomas for his first of the season with 2 seconds remaining.

Buchnevich scored the first of his two short-handed goals with 8:08 left in the second to make it 4-0. He had a power-play goal at 1:20 of the third and Schenn completed his hat trick with another power-play score 1:29 later to make it 6-1 and chase Georgiev.

Buchnevich finished off his hat trick with 4:03 remaining and Toropchenko made it 8-1 with 49 seconds left.

Johnson added a late goal for the Avalanche to complete the scoring with 28 seconds to go.

The Avalanche were without Artturi Lehkonen, who suffered an upper body injury when he collided with the boards in Thursday night’s loss to Seattle. Andrew Cogliano also was out with an upper body injury.

UP NEXT

Blues: Host Tampa Bay on Tuesday night.

Avalanche: Host Anaheim on Wednesday night to finish a four-game homestand.

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AP NHL: https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL