Dawn, Fla. (AP) — Joel Hofer stopped 36 photographs, Pavel Buchnevich scored 2 times and the St. Louis Blues topped the sliding Florida Panthers 4-1 on Thursday night.
Buchnevich additional an help, offering him a a few-position night. Robert Thomas had three helps, and Jordan Kyrou and Alexey Toropchenko also scored for the Blues.
Eetu Luostarinen scored the Panthers’ lone aim, and Sergei Bobrovsky produced 21 saves.
St. Louis has received a few of its final 4 video games beneath interim coach Drew Bannister, matching the very best extend of the year for the Blues. The decline all through that span was 6-1 at Tampa Bay on Tuesday, and Bannister was delighted with the bounce-again.
“To be sincere with you, that is the response I expected,” he mentioned. “It’s a character workforce in there.”
The Blues have received four straight against Florida and are 6-1-1 as opposed to the Panthers in their past 8 conferences.
“It’s a big highway trip,” Hofer stated. “After a performance like final sport, this was a superior reaction by our team.”
The decline was the fourth in Florida’s very last 5 games, the team’s worst these extend of the year. The defending Eastern Meeting champions have been held to one particular objective or less in all four of those people losses.
Florida experienced three photographs hit goalposts on Thursday.
“Pucks aren’t heading in for us proper now,” mentioned coach Paul Maurice, who was significantly additional upset with blunders than missed pictures. “That does not make a difference. It doesn’t simply because each individual workforce goes by means of a extend where they are not scoring. … We’re going to seem at it, we’re likely to talk about it, the language won’t all be thoroughly clean due to the fact that is not the way we engage in. And they know that. This is almost an unavoidable change your team can take at 1 position.”
The new slump means the Panthers won’t be taking significantly momentum into one particular of their far more noteworthy game titles of the frequent year. They host Vegas on Saturday in their very first conference because the Golden Knights beat the Panthers in final season’s Stanley Cup Final.
“Important sport, naturally,” defenseman Aaron Ekblad reported. “Considering our final 5, it’s an vital match. And looking at what took place past calendar year, it is an significant sport.”
Kyrou opened the scoring 4:50 into the second interval and Buchnevich — soon right after getting a purpose taken off the board for the reason that the enjoy was dominated offside — built it 2- at 7:46.
Luostarinen caught Hofer off-guard with a clearing try that bounced off the glass and into an vacant internet — Hofer was ready for a bounce that hardly ever arrived. Toropchenko restored the two-target lead for St. Louis with 3:17 to go in the second interval with a deflection of Marco Scandella’s shot, and Buchnevich included an vacant-netter with 3:09 to play.
The Panthers have yet another milestone of kinds awaiting Friday. They will keep their initially practice at the War Memorial in Fort Lauderdale, about 2 1/2 decades just after the workforce broke ground on what was budgeted to be a $65 million refurbishment of a facility at first built in the 1950s.
UP Next
Blues: Host the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday evening.
Panthers: Host the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday afternoon.
Copyright 2023 The Affiliated Press. All legal rights reserved. This substance may well not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
