Ryan O’Reilly posted his second career hat trick and Jaden Schwartz added a pair of goals as the St Louis Blues routed the visiting Minnesota Wild 9-1 Friday night.
Justin Faulk (goal, two assists), Sammy Blais (goal, two assists), Torey Krug (two assists), Robert Thomas (two assists) and Tyler Bozak (two assists) also had multi-point games for the Blues. Zach Sanford and Ivan Barbashev also scored as the Blues won consecutive games for the first time since March 19-20.
Jordan Binnington made 24 saves in the victory.
This game was a slump-buster for the Blues. Schwartz scored his first goal since Jan. 26 (a span of 17 games), Faulk scored his first since Feb. 12 after 25 consecutive games without a goal, and Sanford scored his first in 12 games.
Zach Parise scored for the Wild and Kaapo Kahkonen made 29 saves.
The Blues outshot the Wild 18-12 in the first period while racing to a 4-1 lead.
They scored off the rush 92 seconds into the game. Thomas led the breakout, worked a give-and-go with Bozak, then set up Sanford flying in from the left wing.
Schwartz made it 2-0 while cutting through the right circle at the 6:59 mark. Just 34 seconds later, Parise cut the lead to 2-1 with a rebound conversion for his first goal since Feb. 24.
But Schwartz restored the two-goal margin by coming down the middle to convert Brayden Schenn’s left-wing pass nearly eight minutes later.
Blais scored 90 seconds later after Faulk raced to negate an icing call, then centred the puck from behind the net. O’Reilly made it 5-1 just 69 seconds into the second period. He buried a slap shot driving through the slot.
The rout was on. O’Reilly burst down ice for a shorthanded goal 3 1/2 minutes later. Faulk later made it 7-1 during a delayed penalty on the Wild at the 8:19 mark.
O’Reilly notched his hat trick when he scored from the blue line through traffic midway through the third period and Barbashev made it 9-1 with a power-play deflection with 2:21 remaining.

Knights score season-best 7
goals, top Coyotes
Reilly Smith scored two goals, Jonathan Marchessault, Chandler Stephenson and Max Pacioretty each had a goal and an assist and the Vegas Golden Knights built a five-goal lead before holding on for a 7-4 victory over the Arizona Coyotes on Friday in Las Vegas.
Vegas led 4-0 after the first period and 5-0 at the game’s midpoint before the Coyotes rallied. The seven goals were a season high for the Golden Knights.
Marchessault, William Carrier, Keegan Kolesar and Smith all scored in a 5:41 span in the opening period. William Karlsson added two assists for Vegas, which remained four points behind the first-place Colorado Avalanche in the West Division. Robin Lehner made 22 saves for the Golden Knights to improve to 8-0-2 in his past 10 home starts.
Nick Schmaltz had a goal and an assist and Clayton Keller, Dryden Hunt and Michael Bunting also scored for Arizona. Phil Kessel, playing in his 885th consecutive game to break a tie with Steve Larmer for the fifth-longest ironman streak in NHL history, had three assists.
Adin Hill stopped 27 of 32 shots before being replaced by Ivan Prosvetov at the start of the third period. Prosvetov finished with three saves. Vegas, which fired 51 shots on goal in a 3-1 loss at St. Louis on Wednesday, got off to a hot start Friday.
Marchessault started the scoring with a power-play goal at the 3:03 mark, and Carrier followed with a rebound goal 98 seconds later, forcing Arizona coach Rick Tocchet to call a timeout to try to regroup his team. It didn’t work as Kolesar made it 3-0 two minutes later and Smith followed with a short-handed goal at the 8:44 mark. Stephenson extended the Vegas lead to 5-0 early in the second period with a breakaway goal. Schmaltz got the Coyotes on the board just before the end of the middle period with a power-play.
Arizona cut it to 5-3 early in the third period when Hunt and Keller scored 58 seconds apart. Smith upped the lead to 6-3 midway through the period for the 19th two-goal game of his career, but Bunting answered just 15 seconds later.
Pacioretty ended the scoring with an empty-net goal with 54.3 seconds left.


Results:
Golden Knights 7-4 Coyotes
Capitals 4-3 Sabres
Penguins 6-4 Devils
Avalanche 2-0 Ducks
Sharks 5-2 Kings
Rangers 4-1 Islanders