Schenn, Buchnevich each has hat trick in Blues win against Avalanche

Mikko Rantanen and Jack Johnson scored for the Avalanche (8-5-0), who have lost five of their past seven games. Alexandar Georgiev allowed six goals on 28 shots before being replaced in the third period by Ivan Prosvetov, who made 12 saves.

“The third period was a joke. That was the worst period I’ve ever seen from our club,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “We’re getting outplayed. Goaltender’s getting outplayed by their goaltender. Forwards are getting outplayed by their forwards. ‘D’ are getting outplayed by their ‘D.’ Not for the whole game, but for big enough stretches. That’s why the score gets run up.”

Schenn gave the Blues a 1-0 lead at 1:08 of the first period when he redirected Krug’s point. He then made it 2-0 at 18:53 by elevating the puck over a sprawling Georgiev.

“Our offense has really changed or started to come around since the last time we were here in this building (4-1 loss on Nov. 1),” Schenn said. “We had some meetings and [were] kind of shown League-wide trends of how to score and what really works and what we were doing that wasn’t right. So ever since then, the buy-in has been there, and guys are getting rewarded for it.

“It’s not anything flashy. It’s putting the puck in deep, grinding teams down, getting to the net, ‘D’ shooting pucks, and not passing up opportunities. It’s not a recipe other teams don’t know, it’s just you have to have a commitment to do it, and when you do, other things open up for you, and like I said, guys get rewarded.”

Krug pushed it to 3-0 with two seconds remaining in the first, scoring glove side with a wrist shot from above the right circle.

Buchnevich made it 4-0 at 11:52 of the second period, finishing a 2-on-1 with Oskar Sundqvist for a short-handed goal.

“I think it’s a big game for our club, just confidence-wise, and you can see things were connecting for the guys tonight,” Binnington said. “We’ve been working hard, we’ve been working on our foundation, and I think just buying in, finding a way, seeing success and seeing guys get some goals and assists, and it all starts from our framework and our foundation.”