ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Blues have made the Scottrade Center one of the toughest buildings for visiting teams to play in. And their rowdy crowd helped them steal another win Thursday night against the Edmonton Oilers.
The Blues scored three third-period goals, including two in less than two minutes to start the period, to pull off an impressive 4-3 come-from-behind win.
The win gave the Blues 16 at home, tops in the NHL.
"You need that," Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. "That's what you want. That's what home-ice advantage is for. We always want to be a tough team to play in our building and certainly the fans play a big part of that. Things seem to go our way here."
The Blues trailed 3-1 entering the third period before going on the power play just 17 seconds into the period. It took just three seconds for the Blues to make them pay when Pietrangelo rifled a shot from the point past Oilers goalie Devan Dubnyk to make it 3-2.
With the crowd back in the game, the Blues went on another power play just 32 seconds later and scored the game-tying goal just 1:48 into the period when David Backes beat Dubnyk for his 12th goal of the season.
Before the Oilers even knew what had happened, the Blues had tied the game and the announced crowd of 18,428 was rocking.
"When it went 3-2, they were a huge factor," coach Ken Hitchcock said of the fans. "They've been a huge factor all year for us. I told the players this a week ago: I think they get us points all the time. When (we are) tied or especially when we're up a goal, they are like playing for us. It's a huge factor."
The Blues appeared to feed off the crowd once the game was tied and the Oilers seemed to get rattled. The Blues scored the eventual game-winning goal just 8:59 into the period on a shot from Matt D'Agostini.
The three third-period goals gave the Blues 16 home wins, one more than the Detroit Red Wings and two more than Chicago, Boston and Washington. The Blues are 16-3-2 at home, where they average more than a goal per game more (3.10) than when they play on the road (2.00). They allow just 1.86 goals per game at home compared to 2.37 on the road.
"There's no better feeling than playing in front of our home fans," defenseman Carlo Colaiacovo said. "We knew that if we got that next one to make it 3-2, they were going to get back into the game. We're a good home team. We're a good team, period."
The win gave the Blues 51 points overall, just two behind the Vancouver Canucks for tops in the Western Conference. And they've got a chance to make a run at the top spot in January, with seven of their next nine games at home.
"We want this to be a tough place to play," Colaiacovo said. "You can ask every guy in the room where they love playing the most and we absolutely love playing in front of our home fans.
"They've been great for us from day one and they really provide us the extra energy we need. Tonight's another reason why they are the best fans in the league."
The Colorado Avalanche will be next to attempt a rare win in St. Louis when they visit Saturday night for a 7 p.m. CT start.
