MINNEAPOLIS -- The St. Louis Blues used a five-goal second period to pull away from the Minnesota Wild in a 6-4 win in the 2022 NHL Discover Winter Classic at Target Field on Saturday.
"The second period, I thought we came out and we were very connected," Blues captain Ryan O'Reilly said. "We had numbers all over the ice. The way we forechecked, tracking, we were just very connected and trusting each other out there. When you do that, things are clean.
"We created a lot of 3-on-2s. A lot of momentum was just generated from that. I think everyone was on the same page. [The Jordan Kyrou] line, too, the plays they were making, just very, very good. It was fun to watch."
The five goals were the most scored by a team in any period of an outdoor game in NHL history.
Kyrou factored in on four of them (two goals, two assists), which is the most points scored in an NHL outdoor game. Linemates Vladimir Tarasenko (one goal) and Robert Thomas (two assists) combined for three points in the period.
"It's unbelievable, right," said Kyrou, who has scored 32 points (12 goals, 20 assists) in 29 games this season. "Any time you get to play in the Winter Classic, it's pretty cool. Growing up as a kid, it's something you always watch and dream of playing in."
With the score tied 1-1 after the first period, the Blues put their stamp on the game with a dominant showing in the second.
Despite the fact that the game was the coldest in the history of NHL outdoor games (minus 5.7 at puck drop), the Blues took no time to get warmed up after returning from the first intermission.
Kyrou scored 27 seconds into the second when he avoided a check by Alex Goligoski along the left boards and drove to the net. After skating to the bottom of the left circle, his backhand centering pass, which was intended for Tarasenko, deflected in off the stick Wild forward Ryan Hartman to give the Blues a 2-1 lead.
Tarasenko then one-timed a pass from Kyrou to make it 3-1 at 8:55. It was Tarasenko's third goal in an outdoor game; he scored twice in a 4-1 victory against the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2017 Winter Classic at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Boston Bruins forward David Pastrnak (four) is the only player with more outdoor goals in NHL history.
The Blues made it 4-1 at 14:46 when Ivan Barbashev scored a power-play goal by shooting home the rebound of a shot by Kyrou with one second remaining on a slashing penalty to Wild forward Nico Sturm.
Kyrou then extended the lead to 5-1 at 17:58 when he played give-and-go with forward Robert Thomas inside the blue line before shooting under the crossbar.
"[Kyrou]'s energy, the way he came out with confidence, he was making plays," O'Reilly said. "It's not easy out there on that ice, pucks are bouncing a lot, and for him to have the confidence to handle the puck the way he did and some of the plays he made, it didn't bother him at all. It was impressive to see."
Goalie Jordan Binnington had a perfect view for the brilliant play of the Blues in the second period.
"It's a big show today and we rose to the occasion, and I think I'm really happy for [Kyrou]," said Binnington, who made 29 saves. "I know how good he is, how hard he works, so it's good to see. I'm happy I'm on his team."
Defenseman Torey Krug scored the fifth goal for St. Louis in the period at 19:19 to push it to 6-2. The goal came 41 seconds after Wild forward Rem Pitlick made it a 5-2 game.
"We didn't play desperate like we did in the third," Hartman said. "We weren't responsible offensively or defensively. They like to send a fourth guy out to join the rush, and we just kind of let them. We didn't have a pushback in the second."
Four teams had previously scored four goals in a period of an outdoor game, most recently the Boston Bruins, who did it in the second period of a 7-3 win against the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2021 NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe on Feb. 21, 2021.
"When you are playing in that kind of extreme weather, you have to dig in, you got to want it," St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. "I thought our guys did a tremendous job of playing north, keeping it simple, especially the first two periods. Really putting pressure on them.
"That's what I thought we did really well, forechecked well and put pressure on them. We capitalized on some goals, and I thought that gave us momentum."
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