Byram scores twice to help Avs silence the Blues

Bowen Byram scored twice and Mikko Rantanen scored his 200th NHL goal to help the Colorado Avalanche beat the St. Louis Blues 4-1 Saturday and remain in third place in the Central Division.

Valeri Nichuskin also scored, and Justus Annunen stopped 19 shots in his season debut to give Colorado its third win in four games.

“I thought he was steady,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said of Annunen, who appeared in his third NHL game. “Good outing from him. He didn’t have a lot of work, but made some saves look easy.”

Sammy Blais scored for St. Louis, and Jordan Binnington made 29 saves as the Blues snapped a threegame winning streak.

Byram recorded his first career multigoal game when he one-timed a feed from Samuel Girard on a power play for his fifth goal of the season to give Colorado a 4-1 lead 9:40 into the third period.

Rantanen scored his team-leading 35th of the season and 200th of his career with 3:23 remaining in the first period to give Colorado a 1-0 lead.

ELSEWHERE

Blues-Maple Leafs trade: St. Louis is looking to the future after trading captain and center Ryan O’Reilly along with center Noel Acciari, a former Florida Panther, to Toronto on Friday night. St. Louis acquired Toronto’s 2023 first-round draft pick and 2024 secondround draft pick and Ottawa’s 2023 third-round pick from the Maple

Leafs.

Toronto also traded its 2025 fifth-round pick to the Minnesota Wild for the rights to forward prospect Josh Pillar in exchange for the Wild picking up 25% of O’Reilly’s salary.

The 32-year-old O’Reilly, who won the 2019 Conn Smythe trophy, had 12 goals and seven assists in 40 games this season, while Acciari, 31, had 10 goals and eight assists in 54 games. Both players are set to be unrestricted free agents this offseason.

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