Buffalo Sabres at St. Louis Blues

Schenn and Neighbours star as Blues beat Sabres 6-4

Kevin Hayes had a goal and an assist and Brandon Saad also scored for the Blues, who won for the fourth time in their last six games.

Jordan Binnington made 41 saves for St. Louis, which improved to 5-0-0 against Eastern Conference teams this season.

“Roller-coaster game” Neighbours said. “That’s not how we want to play obviously. We’re happy that we got the two points and we’ll move on from it, but there’s definitely areas that we can clean up. Just being harder, harder to play against, harder in our battles and stuff like that and just trying to piece together 60 minutes.”

Rasmus Dahlin, Peyton Krebs and Zach Benson each had a goal and an assist for Buffalo. JJ Peterka also scored and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 14 saves.

The Sabres outshot the Blues 45-20, but they dropped to 1-8-2 in their last 11 games at St. Louis.

“We had our chances,” Dahlin said. “I mean, we played really good. We could have had five more goals. But they didn’t want to go in today. It is what it is sometimes, but I think we got to just look forward.”

The Blues coughed up a 3-0 lead before their second line scored a pair of goals 24 seconds apart in the second period.

Hayes got his fifth of the season at 13:04, breaking a 3-all tie, and Schenn followed with his second of the game. Both goals were set up by perfect feeds from Jordan Kyrou.

“Just got to get back to our game, get back to moving our feet and playing harder,” Kyrou said. “We weren’t really winning any battles, we weren’t skating. We did that after.”

Neighbours finished a 2-on-0 break with Pavel Buchnevich in the third period. He has seven goals in his last seven games and nine on the season.

St. Louis led 3-1 despite getting outshot 15-8 in the first period.

Saad put the Blues in front 68 seconds into the game, scoring on a wrist shot directly from an Oskar Sundqvist faceoff win. It was his fifth goal of the season and stopped an 11-game scoring drought.

Schenn scored a power-play goal and Neighbours made it 3-0 at 10:59, banging home a rebound off a Nick Leddy shot from the point.

The goal came as Neighbours’ father, Ed, was being interviewed on the local game broadcast.

“I might have to ask him to move in or something,” Neighbours said. “Maybe my good luck charm. It’s obviously nice to get a few for him.”

Dahlin got the Sabres on the board with 6:28 left in the opening frame, converting a slapshot off a Kyle Okposo feed. Dahlin has eight points in his last seven games.

Benson’s second of the season at 6:10 of the second got Buffalo within a goal.

“We went out in the first period, I thought we did a good job, got the lead, played pretty good,” Blues coach Craig Berube said. “Second period, we just kind of weren’t available for pucks, we didn’t move the puck. When we did, we didn’t put it on the tape, we put it to the other team. That’s all self-inflicted wounds.”

Casey Mittelstadt had a chance to even it midway through the second, but Binnington stopped the breakaway chance with a blocker save.

Krebs tied it up moments later, putting a rebound between Binnington’s pads to make it 3-all.

“We created our own mess,” Sabres coach Don Granato said. “First period, I thought we had possession in the D-zone and handed pucks over too easily, which is tough to recover from when you think you’re exiting and you’re not. They were very opportunistic, obviously, but we made the mess ourselves.”

UP NEXT

Sabres: At Carolina on Saturday night to end a four-game trip. It will end a stretch of seven out of eight games on the road.

Blues: At Arizona on Saturday night.

STL leads series 1-0