Blues keep rolling under new coach Yeo

TORONTO — Vladimir Tarasenko strode through the neutral zone, dipped around a Maple Leafs forward, deked out another and then fired a shot past Frederik Andersen to clinch another victory for the suddenly red-hot St. Louis Blues.

The Blues improved to 4-1-0 under new head coach Mike Yeo, beating the Leafs 2-1 in overtime at the Air Canada Centre on Thursday night. St. Louis has allowed only six goals in five games under Yeo — including one in the last three outings — with goaltending from Jake Allen primarily taking a big leap forward.

Allen stopped 31 of 32 shots against the Leafs after posting a 30-save shutout two nights earlier.

“I think guys are all just jumping on board, playing hard for each other and doing the little things,” the 26-year-old Allen said of the energy around the group since the coaching change which saw Yeo replace Ken Hitchcock last week.

The Blues outshot Toronto 17-4 over the first 20 minutes, grabbing the first goal from Patrik Berglund just over four minutes in.

“They were better and more competitive and stronger than us in the first period,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “We lost too many battles early and then as we got more and more competitive I thought we did a lot of really good things and got a lot better.”

The Leafs tied it with 64 seconds to go in the second. Nazem Kadri drove down the right side and fired a shot at Allen, the juicy rebound trickling off William Nylander toward the weak-side where it was slammed home by Morgan Rielly.

Tarasenko ended it after only 20 seconds of overtime. The Russian winger trails only Sidney Crosby and Jeff Carter with his 26 goals this season, right there among the top-10 leading scorers with 53 points in 55 games.

Penguins 4, Avalanche 1

DENVER — Patric Hornqvist scored twice while Sidney Crosby was held in check, and Matthew Murray made 27 saves to help Pittsburgh beat Colorado.

Crosby remained stuck on 998 career points in his bid to become the 86th player in NHL history to reach 1,000.