Avalanche defeat Blues, clinch Western Conference, Central Division titles

ST. LOUIS – The Colorado Avalanche clinched the top seed in the Western Conference and won the Central Division title with a 3-1 win against the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center on Tuesday.

“We’re not all the way there yet,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “The goal for us was starting with winning the division, the conference. Still need another win to get first overall. We’d be crazy not to chase that at this point, right? It’s important. If you get to where you want to go, you might as well try and get your home ice, especially after a season like this.

“But it feels great, yeah. We’re not throwing parades or that kind of stuff yet. We’re happy with where we’re at. We should celebrate it a little bit because it’s a big goal of ours at the start of the year, and now we’ve accomplished part of it and we’ll stay focused here. We’ve got five games to go to keep working on our game and dialing in on some things, so we feel really good about our game going into the playoffs.”

Valeri Nichushkin scored twice for the Avalanche (51-16-10), who had lost two of their previous three games. Scott Wedgewood made 18 saves.

“You come into the season, the goal is to make the playoffs, right?” Wedgewood said. “And then as the picture’s starting to form in your mind, you start to win your division and then win the League and win the West, stuff that kind of comes with it. Home ice is super important, regardless of if it’s Round 1. If you get all the way to Round 4 and you get home ice, it’s an advantage. You spend more days at home between rounds. All that will hopefully pay dividends for us, but we’ve been, not cruising all year, we’ve had our ups and downs, but with that hot start, we were able to push the confidence and what you can do in the mind. I think this lineup’s taken advantage of it all year.”

Robert Thomas scored for the Blues (33-32-12), who are six points behind the Nashville Predators for the second wild card in the West with five games remaining. Joel Hofer made 34 saves for St. Louis, which was 3-0-1 in its previous four games, including a 3-2 win at Colorado on Sunday.

“We expected to see a better version of the Avs, and we did,” St. Louis coach Jim Montgomery said. “The first period, they won all those battles. It was almost over 60 percent, and they were really committed to checking. Everybody thinks about their speed and their offense, but what’s really impressive about their team is how committed they are to checking. They’re No. 1 in goals-against by a lot. Goals-for they lead, but it’s not by a lot. Tonight they came out and they were going to make sure they gave us nothing, and then we had to defend a lot and they threw a lot of pucks at the net early, and then as the period wore on in the first they started to find slot lines on us, which has been a real strength of ours. They exposed it because we had to defend so much, and then the second period was the same thing.”

The Avalanche outshot the Blues 17-2 in the first and led 2-0 after scoring twice late in the period.

“We’ve been up and down here a little bit recently,” Bednar said. “I didn’t love our game against (the Vancouver Canucks, an 8-6 loss last Thursday), loved our game against Dallas (a 2-0 win against the Stars on Saturday), our defensive game the other night against the Blues. Tonight, I really liked it. We’ve proven that we can do it when we set our minds to it. … I don’t have to see it for 60 minutes for every game the rest of the way, but we need to see it enough to secure our goal and making sure everyone’s confident in the way we play.

“Tonight, the way we played was great, and the win’s even better.”

Nichushkin made it 1-0 at 16:11, getting in front of the net and tipping Devon Toews's wrist shot from straight away near the blue line.

Martin Necas made it 2-0 at 19:32. The Avalanche pressured the Blues, and Necas converted Nathan MacKinnon’s pass from the edge of the right circle.

“We knew they would come out hard, be a little upset that we won in their barn,” St. Louis forward Jake Neighbours said of the Avalanche. “They obviously made it a point to come out hard in ours. Just didn’t think we were ready at the start. Battles weren’t good, they controlled a lot of the play obviously and you get behind on that team, they play unbelievable defense when they want to so it’s hard to climb back.”

Nichushkin scored short-handed at 1:40 of the second period to make it 3-0. After Pavel Buchnevich lost puck in the neutral zone, Brock Nelson sent Nichushkin in, and he was able to pull the puck between his legs and get enough of it off Logan Mailloux’s stick to get past Hofer.

Thomas, who scored his first NHL hat trick on Sunday, made it 3-1 at 15:38. Theo Lindstein sent Thomas in, and he followed his initial shot attempt and put it past Wedgewood.

NOTES: Nichushkin, who missed the loss to the Blues on Sunday because of a lower-body injury, has scored five goals in two games against St. Louis; he scored a hat trick in a 6-1 win on Dec. 31. … Necas has 23 points (11 goals, 12 assists) on a 12-game road point streak. … Colorado forward Nicolas Roy played 11:48 after missing seven games with an upper-body injury. … Thomas has 11 points (six goals, five assists) on a six-game point streak. … The Avalanche got a bit of a scare when Blues defenseman Philip Broberg was tripped by Colorado defenseman Sam Malinski and slid into Wedgewood at 10:25 of the third period. Wedgewood hit the left post hard and was down on the ice for a period of time but remained in the game.