VANCOUVER — Jordan Kyrou scored his first NHL hat trick and had an assist for the St. Louis Blues in their fourth straight win, 5-1 against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena on Monday.
Robert Thomas had a goal and an assist, Vladimir Tarasenko had three assists and Jordan Binnington made 33 saves for the Blues (16-15-1), who went 2-for-3 on the power play and have a five-game point streak (4-0-1).
Vancouver went 0-for-4 with the man-advantage.
“The PK was really good, and [the] power play scored a couple and that’s the difference in the game,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “Special teams are really important. Your special teams can win your game or lose you a game.”
Ilya Mikheyev scored, and Spencer Martin made 22 saves for the Canucks (13-14-3), who shuffled their four lines and three defense pairs but lost for the third time in four games, including 5-1 to the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday.
They are 5-9-1 at home, and five of those losses were by a 5-1 score.
“I’m running out things to say here,” Vancouver Bo Horvat said. “Obviously another poor effort by us and that’s the result.
“We play like a completely different team on the road. I don’t know if we’re pushing too hard at home to not get booed out of our building every night. I think it’s just turning on us right now, and we’re just kind of running around with their heads cut off a little bit too much, and that’s again the result tonight. We’re sick of letting our fans down, each other down, at home.”
Kyrou gave the Blues a 1-0 lead at 10:25 of the second period with a wrist shot from the top of the right face-off circle three seconds after Martin made a save against Nick Leddy (two assists).
“[Kyrou] has an amazing shot,” Leddy said.
Mikheyev tied it 1-1 on a breakaway at 12:24, but Nathan Walker scored his first goal of the season to restore the Blues lead 38 seconds later at 13:02 on a wrist shot off the rush from the left hash mark to make it 2-1.
“I just tried to find some open ice on the weak side and Leddy made a great heads-up play, and [I] just decided to grip it and rip it,” Walker said. “Whenever you get on the board and chip in it’s great, but that was right after their goal, so it obviously pulled the momentum away from them and gave it back to us.”
Thomas gave St. Louis a 3-1 lead with a power-play goal at 18:50, a wrist shot over Martin’s glove from the right dot.
“It’s like Groundhog Day,” Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau said. “We’re a fragile group and once they got the second and third in quick succession, it was like, ‘Oh no, here we go again.'”
Kyrou scored his second goal on a power play 1:07 into the third period on a screened shot to make it 4-1, then completed the hat trick at 9:19 into an open net after a cross-ice pass from Thomas stranded Martin for the 5-1 final.
Kyrou has six goals in three games, and 10 points (six goals, four assists) in a four-game point streak.
“[Kyrou] has been playing real good hockey for some time, and the goals were going to come eventually,” Berube said. “He’s too good of a player. Now he’s capitalizing, but his work ethic has been there for the whole year.”
St. Louis has given up six goals during its four-game winning streak, which started with a 1-0 overtime victory against the Nashville Predators on Dec. 12.
“Just everyone playing good [defense],” Leddy said. “The forwards coming back help the [defensemen] have good, tight gaps, and that gets them the puck quicker as well.”
NOTES: Kyrou took a hard hit from Canucks defenseman Kyle Burroughs with 1:31 left and wasn’t available after the game because he was receiving treatment. … Canucks center Elias Pettersson, who leads them with 34 points (13 goals, 21 assists) in 29 games, missed his second straight game with an illness. … Vancouver forward Brock Boeser returned after missing two games with illness. He had five shots on goal and played a season high 20:18 on a new-look top line with Mikheyev and Horvat. … Vancouver recalled goalie Arturs Silovs from Abbotsford of the American Hockey League on an emergency basis to back up Martin after Collin Delia’s wife gave birth Monday.
