Blues overcome slow start to win fifth in a row, beat Blackhawks, 4-1

Matthew DeFranks, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Mar 22, 2025

Published in Hockey

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ST. LOUIS — It wasn’t the same hockey the Blues had been playing, but the two points add up all the same.

During a 4-1 win over the Blackhawks on Saturday afternoon, the Blues did not resemble the same group that had dominated possession consistently and controlled games at will. Instead, they were sometimes sloppy, other times uncharacteristically haphazard against the bottom-feeding Blackhawks.

The win extended the Blues’ win streak to a season-high five games, and gave them an 11-2-2 record since the 4 Nations break. The Blues extended their lead on Vancouver to three points as the Canucks lost to the Rangers on Saturday. Fellow Western Conference playoff hopefuls Calgary and Utah played after the Blues did.

Robert Thomas, Alexey Toropchenko, Nathan Walker and Zack Bolduc scored for the Blues, as Joel Hofer made 26 saves. Ilya Mikheyev scored a short-handed goal for the Blackhawks in the final minute of the second period.

The Blues will finish their final back-to-back of the season on Sunday when they host the Predators. It’s the second of three meetings with Nashville in a 10-day span.

Fourth line power

Toropchenko’s goal with 2:40 remaining in the second period gave the Blues a 2-0 lead when he finished off a pretty passing play from Walker to Radek Faksa to Toropchenko. After going 50 games without a goal, Toropchenko now has three in his last eight games.

Mikheyev’s goal made it 2-1 heading into second intermission (Landon Slaggert had a short-handed chance of his own almost immediately after), but Walker restored a two-goal cushion by driving the back post and tapping in a pass from Toropchenko.

It was Toropchenko’s third multi-point game of the season, and the first for Walker.

Thomas got the Blues on the board first at 15:13 of the second period, finishing a set of midair swats from Jordan Kyrou to Dylan Holloway to Thomas that ended up in the back of the net. Chicago paused momentarily to judge if the puck had been played with a high stick before opting not to challenge the goal.

Bolduc scored his 14th of the season (and eighth since the break) at 7:43 of the third period to extend the Blues lead to three goals.

Buchnevich out

Blues forward Pavel Buchnevich missed Saturday’s game, as Alexandre Texier was in the lineup for the first time since Feb. 4 against the Oilers. Texier missed four of those games due to illness, and then the other 12 as a healthy scratch.

Before the game, Blues coach Jim Montgomery said Texier would be in the lineup, but didn’t specify who would be out, only that some Blues were battling illness.

For Buchnevich, it was his first missed game since he missed two on Nov. 30 and Dec. 3 with a lower-body injury.

Zack Bolduc took Buchnevich’s spot on the top line, as Texier went on the third line with Oskar Sundqvist and Mathieu Joseph.

The changes snapped a streak of 15 straight games with the same forward lines.

Maroon retiring

Former Blues and current Blackhawks forward Pat Maroon announced before Saturday’s game that he would be retiring at season’s end. Maroon is currently in his 14th NHL season, and Chicago is the eighth team he has played for.

Maroon spent one season with the Blues, winning a Cup with the club in 2018-19. Famously, Maroon scored the game-winning goal in double-overtime of Game 7 against Dallas in the second round of the playoffs.

Maroon is from St. Louis, and was known after the goal and the Stanley Cup parade as a “hometown hero.”

Saturday was his 840th career game, the third-most for any player born in Missouri.

It was also Maroon’s final game at Enterprise Center. He got in a fight with Tyler Tucker during the third period.