WASHINGTON — Alexander Steen had two goals and an assist, Brian Elliot stopped 33 shots, and the streaking St. Louis Blues held on to defeat the Washington Capitals 4-3 on Sunday afternoon.
Dmitrij Jaskin and Vladimir Tarasenko also scored for the Blues, winners of five straight and 10 of 11. T.J. Oshie added three assists.
Washington’s Alex Ovechkin scored twice, giving him a league-leading 31 goals. He became the fifth player in NHL history to start his career with 10 30-goal seasons.
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Ovechkin, who added an assist, has 15 goals in his last 15 games.
Karl Alzner also scored for Washington, which is 1-4-2 in its last seven. Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Green had two assists each. Justin Peters made 36 saves.
Alzner’s shot from the point made it 4-3 with 7:32 remaining.
Tarasenko had given St. Louis a 4-2 lead when he converted a pass from Steen on a 2-on-1 rush for his 25th goal at 6:13 of the third period.
The teams were tied after trading power-play goals in the first period.
St. Louis struck first when Peters stopped Oshie’s blast from the point and Jaden Schwartz’s initial rebound attempt, before Steen poked the puck home for his 16th goal at the 2:34 mark.
Ovechkin tied it at 9:50 of the first when he blasted Green’s pass by a sliding Elliot from his familiar power play home in the left circle.
Already minus defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk, who left the game with a lower-body injury after a first-period collision with Ovechkin, the Blues lost forward David Backes when he was ejected for boarding Alzner early in the second.
St. Louis killed off a five-minute Washington power play and took the lead just over a minute later. Catching the Capitals on a change, the Blues skated in 3 on 2. Steen gave up the puck but got it back in front of the net and banged his own rebound past Peters to make it 2-1.
The Capitals tied it after St. Louis turned the puck over in its own end and Ovechkin’s wrist shot from the left circle got past Elliot at 14:30.
Less than two minutes later, the Blues regained the lead — again off a rebound — when Jaskin slid the puck past Peters from the slot.
NOTES: Ovechkin (94) passed Peter Bondra (93) for first place on the Capitals franchise multi-goal games list. He joined Mike Gartner (15 seasons), Wayne Gretzky (13), Jari Kurri and Mike Bossy as 30-goal scorers in at least their first 10 seasons. … The Capitals reassigned D Cameron Schilling to Hershey of the American Hockey League. … The Blues were again without C Patrik Berglund and C Jori Lehtera, who both were hurt at Nashville on Thursday.
