ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jaccob Slavin scored the winning goal 7:53 into the third period and Jake Guentzel added a pair of empty-netters, lifting the Carolina Hurricanes to a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues on Friday night.
Slavin scored when both teams were playing with four men as Carolina wons its fourth game in a row and sixth in its last seven.
Seth Jarvis and Jordan Martinook also scored for Carolina and Frederik Andersen made 29 saves to improve to 13-2-0.
Jordan Kyrou and Zack Bolduc scored for St. Louis and Jordan Binnington made 37 saves.
The Blues had won two in a row and need a win to give themselves a chance to claim one of the wild-card spots. They went into the game three points behind Vegas for the last playoff spot in the Western Conference.
Guentzel’s two empty-net goals gave him 30 for the season.
Kyrou scored his 30th of the season on the power play at 5:31 of the second period when he wristed in a shot from the top of the right faceoff circle after a pass from Robert Thomas, who assisted on both St. Louis goals.
Kyrou has recorded consecutive 30-goal seasons for the first time in his career. Since 2000, only four Blues have done so — Vladimir Tarasenko, Brad Boyes, Keith Tkachuk and Pavol Demitra.
Thomas now has 60 assists. He is the first Blues player to have 60 or more assists in a season since 1993-94 when Craig Janney had 68.
Jarvis scored his 31st goal at 8:07 when his wrist shot from the slot beat Binnington.
Bolduc scored late in the first period for a 1-0 lead. Nick Leddy fed Bolduc, who was alone in the right faceoff circle and hit a slap shot by Andersen. The 21-year-old Bolduc has scored in three consecutive games.
The Hurricanes made it 1-1 with 1:01 to play in the first on Martinook’s goal.
UP NEXT:
Hurricanes: Play at Chicago on Sunday night.
Blues: Host Seattle on Sunday.
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