Blues send Maple Leafs to second straight loss

TORONTO -- The St. Louis Blues ended a three-game losing streak with a 4-1 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena on Saturday.

Robert Bortuzzo, Zach Sanford, Ryan O'Reilly and Ivan Barbashev scored, David Perron had two assists, and Jake Allen made 22 saves for the Blues (2-3-2), who were 0-2-1 in their previous three games.
"That looked a lot more like the St. Louis Blues tonight," Blues coach Mike Yeo said. "I thought the guys came out and gave us a great response as far as last game (a 3-2 loss at the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday) went down and the way we talked about how we had to play the game, we did it to a T."
WATCH: [All Blues vs. Maple Leafs highlights]
Morgan Rielly scored, and Frederik Andersen made 21 saves for the Maple Leafs (6-3-0), who have lost two in a row.
"We have to do a better job obviously," Rielly said. "Less turnovers, play off the cycle a little more. We just have to get it in and grind a little more than we did tonight. It starts with clean breakouts, less turnovers in our own end, more talk to one another to make it easier. The better we do that, the more we'll get through the neutral zone and the better off we'll be."
The Blues took a 1-0 lead at 4:45 of the second period when Bortuzzo's shot from the high slot deflected into the net.

Sanford took a pass from David Perron and shot over Andersen's glove from the right face-off dot at 13:05 to make it 2-0.
O'Reilly one-timed a pass in the slot from Vladimir Tarasenko to make it 3-0 at 16:37. It was his first goal with St. Louis.
"I was hoping it would be a lot sooner, but it was a beautiful play with [Pat] Maroon working hard and Tarasenko with a beautiful pass," said O'Reilly, who was traded from the Buffalo Sabres on July 1. "It's nice to get it out of the way. It was in the back of my head thinking about it, so it's nice to move on from that and get back to playing my game."

St. Louis held Toronto to eight shots through two periods. Allen said it was the Blues' best performance in front of him this season.
"It was pretty textbook hockey. Everyone bought in," Allen said. "That was nice to see. Everyone came to play tonight and if we realize if we do that every night, the majority of the times we'll be in games and have a good chance of success."
Rielly made it 3-1 at 4:22 of the third period, ending the Maple Leafs' goal drought at 116:36.
Barbashev scored shorthanded into an empty net with 1:43 remaining to make it 4-1.
"To be honest with you, we spent less time prescouting the Maple Leafs probably than we have been other teams," Yeo said. "We have to shore up our game and get consistent with our game first. Tonight was a good example of that regardless of who we're playing. We have a way we have to play the game and if we do that for 60 minutes, I think you're going to like a lot of what you see."

They said it

"We have to play tight on them and hard on them. You saw tonight we defended very well, we smothered them and you could see they were frustrated. Jake (Allen) made some huge saves on still some great opportunities, but we did the right things defensively to be tough on those guys. You've got to protect the middle of the ice and not let them make their seam passes to expose guys. We were prepared, we knew what they could do and we had that in our heads."-- Blues forward Ryan O'Reilly
"In the end, they worked hard and they competed harder on the puck, in the hard areas, and we turned the puck over. We weren't good enough. I thought we had a bit of that the other night and then, obviously, we're figuring out that -- we scored early, we scored easy, it was pretty loose and everything was great. Now we're finding out it's in the NHL, it's hard to score, teams compete hard on you, teams adjust and they're going to play you hard." -- Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock on Toronto's second straight loss after a 6-1-0 start

Need to know

Jay Bouwmeester was a healthy scratch for the first time in his NHL career, the St. Louis defenseman said. He has played 1,112 games in 16 NHL seasons. … Auston Matthews led Toronto with six shots but was held without a point for the second straight game. He had multiple points in each of the first seven games of the season, becoming the fifth player in NHL history do so. … Blues forward Tyler Bozak played against his former team for the first time. He had two shots and was minus-1 in 16:00 of ice time. Bozak signed a three-year, $15 million contract (average annual value $5 million) with St. Louis as an unrestricted free agent July 1 after nine seasons with the Maple Leafs.

What's next

Blues: At the Winnipeg Jets on Monday (8 p.m. ET; NHLN, TSN3, FS-MW, NHL.TV)
Maple Leafs: At the Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, SN360, SN1, TVAS)