Shattenkirk lifts Blues to overtime victory

ST. LOUIS -- Kevin Shattenkirk scored 1:11 into overtime to give the St. Louis Blues a 2-1 victory against the Dallas Stars at Scottrade Center on Tuesday.
Shattenkirk took Paul Stastny's feed above the right faceoff circle and beat Dallas goalie Kari Lehtonen with a slap shot on a 4-on-3 power play. The winner came after Stars defenseman Jason Demers took an interference penalty with 14.1 seconds left in the third period to end Dallas' seventh power play.

The Blues initially had trouble working the puck into the Stars zone, but once they did, Alexander Steen and Stastny worked the puck on the cycle before Stastny set Shattenkirk up for the slap shot.
"That play at the end there, I knew [Steen] was going to go to [Stastny] and go through," Shattenkirk said. "I just felt like there was that room over the top. Sure enough, [Stastny] made a great play and found it."

St. Louis and Dallas were a combined 1-for-12 on the power play.
Jaden Schwartz scored in regulation for the Blues (33-17-9), and Brian Elliott made 17 saves to improve to 10-3-3 since Jake Allen went down with a knee injury on Jan. 8.
The Blues are 4-0-1 in their past five games.
"I think we're trusting our work and it shows up on [penalty kill], it shows up in 5-on-5," St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock said. "When you trust your work, whether it's 1-0 or 3-0, you feel comfortable. I think that's what's happened right now. We have people demanding a lot of themselves. We have more to give, especially up front; we have some people who have to get up to speed up front, but what we're doing as a group is trusting our work, and that's allowing us to stay really competitive in the games right now."
Mattias Janmark scored for the Stars (37-15-6), who were held to a season-low 18 shots and had their four-game winning streak end. It was Dallas' first loss in six road games.
"I think when you see a game like that, you see that it was two teams that played sound defensively," Stars coach Lindy Ruff said. "They did their job in the defensive zone. Overall, it was two good teams going at it."

Janmark tied it 1-1 with 6:34 remaining in the third period with his second goal in as many nights. He converted on Valeri Nichushkin's rebound attempt of Alex Goligoski's slap shot from the blue line. Janmark was parked on a sharp angle to the right of Elliott.
"He's surprised us from Day One and he continues to surprise us," Ruff said of Janmark, who scored the overtime winner in a 3-2 victory at the Nashville Predators on Monday. "He's played very well and he put himself in the right spot and put it in."
Schwartz scored his second of the season off a fortuitous bounce 12 seconds into the second period to put St. Louis ahead 1-0. Defenseman Colton Parayko's dump-in caromed off referee Kelly Sutherland's leg to Schwartz in the slot after Lehtonen left the crease, and Schwartz scored into an empty net with Lehtonen trying in vain to get back in net.
"No, I didn't even see it," Schwartz said. "I don't know what happened. I was skating and it landed on my stick, so a really fortunate bounce and a pretty easy goal. I didn't see exactly what it hit."

Lehtonen said: "I've had a couple of goals that have gone in off the referee and they've been waved off, so I wasn't sure what the situation was going to be on that one. But it's just a bad bounce, and I have a lot of respect for those referees. I was happy that I was able to keep going with my game and not let it frustrate me. It didn't go our way, but we've got to keep moving on."
The Blues had a chance to extend their 1-0 lead with a two-man advantage for 1:09, but they had two shots total on the extended power play; one came on the 5-on-3 portion of it, the other on the 5-on-4.
St. Louis had four power-play opportunities in the second period.

The Blues spent the first half of the first period killing four penalties and denied the Stars on each, limiting them to three total shots.
The Blues had the best chance on the Stars' fourth power play, but a back-check prevented Troy Brouwer from converting Scottie Upshall's pass to the left of Lehtonen, who made 20 saves.
The Stars moved into first place in the Central Division, one point ahead of the Chicago Blackhawks, with the overtime loss. St. Louis is five points behind Dallas.