Avalanche defeat Blues in Game 4, sweep first-round series

ST. LOUIS --The Colorado Avalanche swept the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup First Round with a 5-2 win in Game 4 at Enterprise Center on Sunday.

Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon each had a goal and an assist for the Avalanche, the No. 1 seed in the Honda West Division. Colorado will play the winner of the first-round series between the Vegas Golden Knights and Minnesota Wild; Vegas has a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 series.
Philipp Grubauer made 18 saves for the Avalanche, who outscored St. Louis 20-7 in the four games.
"I think it's huge to get a couple days, but most important how we played every game, 60 minutes, every shift," Grubauer said. "Every, every small detail matters in the playoffs. I think we found a way to do that in every game and that's going to be the key moving forward too."
Vladimir Tarasenko scored twice, and Jordan Binnington made 29 saves for the Blues, the No. 4 seed, who were eliminated in the first round for the second straight season after winning the Stanley Cup in 2019.
"To tell you honestly, I'm not ready for these questions right now," Tarasenko said. "To answer all of those is there's no excuses. I can [say] whatever I want to say, and say like we don't fight enough, but it is what it is. This is embarrassing. [It's] always hard to lose in the playoffs, especially like this. There [are] no words, that much you can see."

Tarasenko gave the Blues their first lead of the series on a breakaway at 4:25 of the second period off a stretch pass from Ryan O'Reilly to make it 1-0.
Brandon Saad tied it 1-1 at 11:37 from the high slot for a power-play goal.
Landeskog gave the Avalanche a 2-1 lead with a redirection of Samuel Girard's shot at 14:53.
Rantanen converted a 2-on-1 with MacKinnon to make it 3-1 at 4:20 of the third period.
"It was probably the toughest game for us," Rantanen said. "I think we still played pretty well. I think like Game 2 (a 6-3 win), we weren't really happy how we played. But I think last two games we wrapped up the series really well and found a way to play kind of grinding hockey, so everybody knows we have the speed and the skill. But in the playoffs, sometimes you have to grind wins too, and I think that's what we did last two games."
Tarasenko scored his second of the game with a wrist shot from the left face-off circle for a power-play goal to cut it to 3-2 at 8:39.
MacKinnon's empty-net power-play goal at 19:04 made it 4-2, and Valeri Nichushkin scored an empty-net goal at 19:54 for the 5-2 final.
"They were better than us," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "You get beat four straight, they were better than us."

Landeskog said the Avalanche used O'Reilly's prediction that the Blues were going to win the series as motivation. Colorado's top line of Landeskog, MacKinnon and Rantanen combined for 24 points (nine goals, 15 assists) in the four games.
"Yeah, it did," Landeskog said. " … When you can close this series out without giving the opponents any life or any hope, it's definitely what we wanted to do and not easy to do on the road. But we're happy with the way we played tonight."
NOTES: MacKinnon is the first player in Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques history to score nine points (six goals, three assists) in a Stanley Cup Playoff series while playing four games. … Colorado forward Alex Newhook left the game at 8:19 of the first period because of a lower-body injury after he was checked by Blues defenseman Steven Santini. Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said Newhook hit his back, but there was no update on the severity. … Blues defenseman Jake Walman played for the first time in the series after being removed from NHL COVID-19 protocol. He had one shot on goal in 15:24 of ice time. ... Forward David Perron, who led St. Louis with 58 points (19 goals, 39 assists) in the regular season, missed the entire series in COVID-19 protocol.