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On Tuesday the Blues soundly defeated the Oilers 8-3.

The first scoring chance of the game came off the stick of a player from St. Louis but it wasn’t a Blue but rather St. Louisan Pat Maroon. The cross ice play to Maroon was very readable and Jake Allen made the read, playing it perfectly, putting him square to Maroon making the save look easy.

A little over 3 minutes into the game Vladimir Tarasenko opened the scoring with his 11th goal of the year. His shot got two fortuitous bounces as it deflected off two Oilers before finding the back of the net. The real creation of the goal was by the aggressive forecheck of Brayden Schenn and Jaden Schwartz. .Watch it here.

Less than 5 minutes later, Dmitrij Jaskin made one of his best plays of the year with tremendous board battling and work along the wall, making a great move to get free off the wall and fire a shot at the net. Oiler netminder Cam Talbot was incorrectly down on the play allowing space over his left shoulder and Jaskin found it. Watch it here.

Less than 4 minutes into the 2nd period, Jaden Schartz matched Tarasenko with his 11th goal of the year. The key on this goal was an offensive zone faceoff win. Watch it here.

The Blues made it 4-0 with less than a minute in the 2nd period when the last linemate of the Tarsaenko, Schwartz and Schenn line scored as Schenn notched his 9th goal of the year. Some will say this play was created by an aggressive forecheck by Schwartz but really it was just a terribly lazy play by Adam Larsson (who also deflected the first goal into his own net) and Connor McDavid who didn’t vocally help Larsson to let him know he was in danger. Watch it here.

Milan Lucic finally got the Oilers on the board a little over 6 minutes into the 3rd period as McDavid made a good move around Alex Pietrangelo and fed Lucic for the one-timer at the far post.

The Blues got the goal back less than 2 minutes later with a beautiful passing play by Kyle Brodziak and Chris Thorburn who set up Scottie Upshall who was driving hard to the net for the easy goal. Watch the tic-tac-toe passing play here.

Tarasenko and Schenn both added there 2nd goals of the game midway through the 3rd period (watch them here and here) before Leon Draisaitl blasted a one-timer past Allen.

Paul Stastny capped off the Blues scoring with a goal made by beautiful passing. Watch it here. Overall, the Blues made the Oilers defense look nonexistent. The Oilers backup goalie Broissot actually played fairly well. The Blues easily could have had more than 10 goals instead of 8.

Darnell Nurse got a late goal on a 2 on 1 break. The goal unfortunately pushed Allen’s save percentage below 90% but this is a good example of where statistics are not what they seem. Allen was much better in puck absorption and rebound control and I think he may not have gone 100% all out on the last two goals in his cross ice movement. I’m completely fine with this as there is no reason to risk injury in the situation. Save injury and conserve for the next game and the rest of the season.

There really isn’t any reason to get too high after this game. It’s a long season, no reason to get too high or too low. Also, the Oilers defense is poor as I expected it to be and with Cam Talbot’s play regressing toward the mean, the Oilers fall isn’t as surprising as many are making it out to be.

With the win the Blues temporarily leap frogged the Tampa Bay Lightning for most points in the NHL, at least until the Lightning defeated the Blackhawks in overtime last night. With a 16-5-1, the Blues have earned 75% of their possible points through more than a quarter of the season.

Happy Thanksigiving to all of our American readers. I’ll have another blog later today sharing something I think all Blues should be thankful for.

It’s a great day for hockey.

Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers Nashville Predator's Paul McCann, Winnipeg Jet's Peter Tessier and Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace have generously agreed to a friendly charity wager. We were hoping to do the whole division but don't have it fully represented yet. The blogger whose team finishes the highest the standings at the end of the year gets to pick a charity to whom the others will donate in their name.

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