Martinez, Carrier lift Golden Knights to 6-1 win over Blues

<p>ST. LOUIS &mdash; Alec Martinez scored two goals and William Carrier added a goal and an assist, sparking the Vegas Golden Knights to a 6-1 victory over the struggling St. Louis Blues on Monday night. </p>
<p>Tomas Nosek, Jonathan Marchessault and Nicolas Hague also scored for Vegas. </p>
<p>Tyler Bozak scored for St. Louis.</p>
<p>Robin Lehner was in goal for the Golden Knights and made 31 saves. </p>
<p>With the win, the Golden Knights snapped a 0-2-1 skid and raised their overall record to 25-10-2, good for second place in the West. Vegas has won its last four meetings against St. Louis. </p>
<p>The Blues are 0-6-1 with just eight goals scored since March 22, good for fifth place in the West. St. Louis has fallen to 2-8-1 in its last 11 games.</p>
<p>The Golden Knights’ scored the first two goals before St. Louis got one in the first period.</p>
<p>Nosek got Vegas going at 6:25 on a tip-in. Standing in front of the net, he redirected a shot from the point by Nick Holden for his first goal this season. Vegas made it 2-0 at 12:45, when Martinez snapped a wrist shot from inside the blue line. </p>
<p>St. Louis cut the lead to 2-1 on a goal by Bozak at 17:01. Zach Sanford skated behind the net and passed to Bozak in the slot and his wrist shot beat Lehner.</p>
<p>Vegas blew the game open with four goals in the second period. </p>
<p>The Golden Knights scored two goals 32 seconds apart and added another for three goals in 1:59 and a 5-1 advantage in the second period. Martinez scored on a one-timer at 7:08, followed by Carrier, who tipped in a shot at 7:40. Marchessault scored on a wrist shot at 9:07.</p>
<p>That goal chased rookie goalie Villie Husso, who faced 19 shots. Jordan Binnington came in for Husso, who started successive games for the first time with the Blues. </p>
<p>Binnington was touched for Vegas’ final second-period goal at 13:00 when Hague scored on a wrist shot. </p>
<p>The game began a stretch in which the Blues will play eight of their next 10 games at home. St. Louis fell to 4-9-4 at home. </p>
<p> RETURN OF PIETRANGELO </p>
<p>The Blues honored Alex Pietrangelo, the former Blues captain and a big part of the Stanley Cup champion team, with a video tribute and a standing ovation by the limited number of fans in attendance. Pietrangelo made his first return to St. Louis since signing a free-agent contract with the Vegas Golden Knights last October as a player. He missed the games in St. Louis on March 12-13 because of an injury. After the morning skate on a video chat, Pietrangelo said about the experience: “A little different, right? Obviously I didn’t really know where to go this morning coming in the other way, but all good. Obviously an exciting game for me. I didn’t get to come last time, but business as usual for us out there.”</p>
<p>BLUES ROSTER MOVE</p>
<p>The St. Louis Blues activated defenseman Colton Parayko from injured reserve. The 6-foot-6, 230-pound Parayko has missed the past 21 games — dating to Feb. 15 — with an upper-body injury. The Blues also assigned forward Jacob de la Rose, who cleared waivers Monday, to the taxi squad. </p>
<p>INJURIES</p>
<p>Golden Knights F Ryan Reaves (lower-body injury) has missed four games and D Zach Whitecloud (upper-body injury) has missed three games. Reaves made the trip with the team to St. Louis. Whitecloud did not make the trip. </p>
<p> WHAT’S NEXT</p>
<p>The Knights will remain in St. Louis and play the Blues on Wednesday night. </p>
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