Blues vs. Senators: Pius Suter, Jake Neighbours and Mason McTavish Each Score Twice in 7-2 Rout

Hockey has a name for one player scoring three goals. It does not really have one for three players scoring two apiece, which is what the St. Louis Blues served up in Ottawa. Call it a group project where everybody actually did their part.

Pius Suter, Jake Neighbours and Mason McTavish each scored twice, and the Blues rolled past the Ottawa Senators 7-2 on Tuesday night at Canadian Tire Centre. Adam Jiricek scored his first NHL goal, Pavel Buchnevich handed out three assists, and Joel Hofer made 16 saves as St. Louis ended Ottawa's three-game winning streak.

A Short-Handed Spark

The first period was tight until the Blues found a goal in the least likely spot. With Cam Fowler in the box for holding, Colton Parayko threw a heavy check along the wall in his own zone, pried the puck loose and sent Suter away. Suter skated in alone and beat Samuel Ersson from the left hash marks at 14:28.

"I mean, that's a really good hockey team over there, and they're 5-2 for a reason," Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. "But getting that short-handed goal was really key."

It also set the tone for a frustrating night on the Ottawa power play. The Senators went 1 for 4 with the man advantage, and coach Travis Green did not hide from it. "When your power play goes minus-1, it doesn't generate a lot of momentum," he said.

The Turning Point: 33 Seconds

Neighbours doubled the lead at 13:20 of the second, stepping into a shot from the high slot and threading it through traffic past Ersson's glove. Then Ottawa finally landed a punch. Tim Stutzle won a puck battle behind the net and slipped a backhand pass from the goal line to Claude Giroux in the right circle, and Giroux snapped it high over the blocker at 17:52.

The goal was Giroux's 1,170th career point, tying Bobby Hull for 59th on the NHL's career scoring list. It also lasted about as long as a TikTok. Just 33 seconds later, Jonatan Berggren and McTavish worked a give-and-go on a 3-on-2, and McTavish, somehow alone in a crowd of three Senators at the edge of the crease, backhanded the puck into an open net to make it 3-1.

That was the whole game in a nutshell. Ottawa had pulled within one with a little over two minutes left in the period and lost the momentum before the next faceoff felt settled. "We made a couple mistakes that led to goals, which are uncharacteristic of our team," Green said.

The Third Period Avalanche

The Blues opened the floodgates after the break. Suter scored his second at 7:54, sneaking a one-timer from a sharp angle under Ersson's arm. Neighbours got his second at 14:46, tapping in a Buchnevich feed on the rush. Six seconds later, Dylan Peterson, playing his first NHL game, dropped the gloves with Jorian Donovan, and both received fighting majors.

St. Louis kept going. McTavish ripped a power-play one-timer from the right circle at 15:33, and Jiricek, in his sixth NHL game, made it 7-1 at 16:32 with a shot from above the right circle. Fabian Zetterlund scored on the power play at 18:33 to account for the final margin.

"I don't know if we stopped thinking or what, but you know we didn't help our goaltender," Giroux said.

Star Watch

Pius Suter: Two goals, including the short-handed opener, plus an assist on Jiricek's goal. He was plus-3 and won eight of 11 faceoffs. "We made sure we didn't have to play a 200-foot game, and we got the puck deep," he said.

Jake Neighbours: Two goals in 16:05, including the one that broke a scoreless second period.

Mason McTavish: Two goals and an assist, giving him four goals on the season.

Pavel Buchnevich: Three assists, with a hand in the short-handed opener, Neighbours' second goal and McTavish's power-play goal.

Adam Jiricek: His first NHL goal, in his sixth NHL game, along with a plus-2 rating in 15:04.

Joel Hofer: 16 saves on 18 shots. "It was a great team effort," Hofer said. "You know, we stuck to our game plan, kept it simple, and yeah, we got rewarded tonight."

Samuel Ersson: 19 saves on 26 shots in his second start for Ottawa.

Stats That Matter

• 3: Blues with two goals each. Add Jiricek, and four different Blues accounted for all seven goals.
• 8:38: The span in which the Blues scored four times in the third, from Suter's second goal to Jiricek's first.
• 26-18: St. Louis' advantage in shots, which looks even more lopsided next to the scoreboard.
• 57.1 percent: The Blues' faceoff rate.
• 1 and 1: St. Louis scored a short-handed goal and a power-play goal. Montgomery called both units "a really pleasant sign in our growth as a team."

What It Means

St. Louis improves to 3-2-1, has won two in a row and has earned points in three straight games. The Blues have also scored at least five goals in back-to-back games after Saturday's 5-3 win over Columbus. The trip continues Thursday at Minnesota. "This is a good start for our road trip," Hofer said.

Ottawa falls to 5-2-0 and sees its three-game winning streak end. The Senators were playing the second night of a back-to-back after a 4-1 win at New Jersey on Monday. Ridly Greig also sat out the final 9:09. "He has a strain, so we thought it was best to keep him out," Green said. Green was blunt about the rest. "Our execution was really sloppy," he said. Ottawa hosts the Islanders on Thursday.

Closing Take

Every good team has a night it would like to delete from the group chat, and this was Ottawa's. Captain Thomas Chabot did not dodge it. "And we'll make sure we answer back," he said. For the Blues, the message was simpler. When three different forwards score twice and a rookie defenseman joins the party, you are not riding one hot hand. You are running a deep rotation, and deep rotations tend to age well.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details from the Associated Press; postgame quotes and notes as reported by NHL.com.