Blues hold off Kraken 4-1

Associated Press

ST. LOUIS — If nothing else, the Seattle Kraken have been a tough out this season when it comes to playing the Blues. And Wednesday proved to be more of the same before the 23rd sellout crowd (18,096) of the season at Enterprise Center.

When the teams met on Jan. 13, the Blues trailed by one goal after two periods. This time around, the Blues were up — but by just one goal — after two periods.

The Blues have had trouble putting away bottom-dwellers in the standings this season. But they did it Monday with a workmanlike 5-1 win over the Arizona Coyotes.

Could they do it two times in a row against an also-ran?

The answer Wednesday was yes.

The Blues took care of another team you’re supposed to take care of with a 4-1 victory over Seattle that took some hard work and elbow grease.

They improved to 40-20-10 for the season, for 90 points. That’s just one point behind second-place Minnesota in the Central Division. And wouldn’t you know it, the Wild are in town Friday for a showdown contest. Seattle fell to 22-42-6.

The victory extended the Blues’ point streak to six games (5-0-1).

The Blues had all kinds of chances early, thanks in part to six minutes’ worth of penalties assessed to the Kraken.

Just 2:59 in, Jonas Donskoi went off for tripping Nathan Walker and the Blues had some good chances but couldn’t solve Kraken goalie Chris Driedger.

Well, only 34 seconds after that penalty was killed off, the Kraken were back in the sin bin when Jared McCann drew a four-minute high-sticking penalty for drawing blood on Colton Parayko. The Blues got absolutely nothing going in the opening two minutes of that infraction. In fact, if you didn’t know better you might think the Kraken were on the power play and not St. Louis.

Seattle has a league-leading six shorthanded goals since Feb. 21, and they almost got a couple here. In fact, Seattle had three shots on the penalty kill — plus a post struck by Carson Soucy — before the Blues even had a shot on goal during their power play.

But the Blues’ first shot found the back of the net. On an odd-man rush, with Ivan Barbashev skating down the slot, he and Robert Thomas played a game of catch with the puck. Streaking down left wing, Thomas got it last and beat Driedger backdoor to make it 1-0 at the 8:38 mark of the opening period.