ST. PAUL, MN (AP) – Ryan O’Reilly scored his second goal of the game at 3:43 of overtime and the St. Louis Blues beat the Minnesota Wild 5-4 on Thursday night.
Sammy Blais, Tyler Bozak and Marco Scandella also scored for St. Louis. Ville Husso made 26 saves as the Blues won their fourth straight and seventh in the last 10. St. Louis moved five points ahead of Arizona for the fourth and final playoff spot in the West Division.
Joel Eriksson Ek, Kevin Fiala, Victor Rask and Kirill Kaprizov scored for the Wild, who had a seven-game winning streak snapped by St. Louis on Wednesday in the first of three straight games between the teams. Cam Talbot had 16 saves for Minnesota, which is third in the West and a point behind Colorado.
”They came out harder than us, and it started in the first half,” Fiala said. ”They played the puck better, they kind of outplayed us. Second half, we turned up and get the momentum going. I feel like that’s how it is. It was a good comeback but obviously a loss.”
The teams wrap up their three-game series Saturday at St. Paul.
O’Reilly came off the bench on a line change and Jordan Kyrou made a pass ahead to spring O’Reilly for a breakaway. O’Reilly has 22 goals this season and six in five games against the Wild this season.
Playing Minnesota has helped St. Louis’ surge. The Blues are 4-1-0 against the Wild this season and 8-1-1 in the past 10 matchups.
Minnesota tried to emulate what St. Louis did on Wednesday. The Wild held a 3-1 advantage in the previous game when the Blues scored three times in the third for the win.
This time, Minnesota scored three times in the third.
Eriksson Ek scored before the end of the second to start the rally. Fiala then scored 2:21 into the third. O’Reilly stopped the momentum with a power-play goal, but Rask added his goal and Kaprizov scored with 51.5 seconds left to force overtime.
”We didn’t crack,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. ”They didn’t take our will away in the third period. We kept pushing tonight. . Would you like to have 60 minutes? Sure. Would they have liked to have 60 minutes last night? Sure. But it didn’t happen that way.”
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