Schenn, Buchnevich net 3 goals each as Blues roll
Written by I Dig SportsDENVER -- 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.
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.
The Blues raced to a 4-0 lead before Rantanen's tip-in with 3:53 left in the second period.
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 loss left Colorado coach Jared Bednar one win shy of 300.
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.