Allen, Blues shut out Avalanche
DENVER -- Jake Allen made 27 saves for his third shutout of the season, and the St. Louis Blues picked up two valuable points with a 3-0 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday night.
Paul Stastny, Kyle Brodziak and Patrik Berglund collected the goals for the Blues, who stopped a five-game skid and moved past the idle Los Angeles Kings for the second wild-card slot in the Western Conference.
St. Louis (32-27-5) has 69 points, one more than the Kings, and has played one fewer game than Los Angeles.
Jeremy Smith stopped 22 shots for Colorado, which was shut out for the 11th time this season and has just two goals in the past four games. The franchise record for times getting blanked is 12, set in 2008-09.
The Avalanche (17-44-3) have lost four straight and seven of their past eight. They are 2-10-1 in the last month.
The Blues wasted no time in grabbing the lead and then padding it.
Stastny got St. Louis on the board when he scored a power-play goal at 3:56 of the first. He positioned himself on the left side of the crease and knocked in a crossing pass from Jaden Schwartz for his 17th of the season.
Brodziak made it 2-0 just 1:37 later when he converted Fedor Tyutin's turnover into his eighth goal.
Colorado had some chances to cut into the lead, including a point-blank shot by Nathan MacKinnon, but Allen kept Colorado off the board.
The Blues then made it 3-0 when Berglund scored off another Avalanche turnover at 10:11 of the second. It was his 18th of the season.
NOTES: Colorado LW Sven Andrighetto, acquired from Montreal on Wednesday, made his Avalanche debut. He registered two shots on goal and a minus-1 rating. ... Blues D Jordan Schmaltz, the team's first-round pick in the 2012 draft, made his NHL debut Sunday night. He finished a plus-1 in 15:07 of ice time. ... The Avalanche are now 6-12 in both games of a back-to-back this season. They are 4-5 in the second game of the sequence. ... St. Louis C Paul Stastny's goal that gave St. Louis a 1-0 lead was his first in 11 games against his former team. ... Colorado is now 0-for-23 on the power play in the past nine games and has just one power-play goal in the past 13 games.