Blues thwarted in shootout

~ St. Louis rallied late to force overtime but was blanked in shootout

ST. LOUIS -- When Toronto's top goalie James Reimer went down with an injury, the Maple Leafs looked for someone to step in and pick up the slack.

Ben Scrivens was ready, willing and able Thursday night.

Scrivens, making his third NHL start, thwarted the St. Louis Blues on three shootout attempts and stopped 37 shots through overtime to help the Maple Leafs snap a two-game losing streak with a 3-2 win over the Blues.

"It's a double-edged sword," Scrivens said. "They don't know much about me. Also, I don't know much about them. So I just tried to get out there and stay big and try and track the puck and force them to beat me with a good move or a good shot."

Phil Kessel scored the only goal in the shootout. John-Michael Liles and Kessel scored first-period, power-play goals, and Tyler Bozak added a pair of assists.

Jason Arnott and Patrik Berglund scored for St. Louis, and Jaroslav Halak stopped 20 shots.

Toronto outshot the Blues 14-8 in the first period, but St. Louis turned that around and had a 32-8 edge the rest of the way. The Blues just had trouble getting pucks past Scrivens.

"I thought we did a good job of funneling pucks to the net," Blues winger Alex Steen said. "We just missed our opportunities. I had one, [Berglund] had a really good one. It ended up costing us the game."

The Blues turned the tide in the second period, outshooting Toronto 14-5 and cutting the lead in half when Arnott netted his fourth of the season on the power play at 8:01. Arnott took a pass from Alex Pietrangelo and sent a shot from the slot past Scrivens.

The Blues kept pushing in the third period, tying it when Berglund hammered in Chris Stewart's shot with 1:56 left. They got some solid scoring chances in overtime, but Scrivens was up to the challenge each time.