Faulk scores lone goal, Blues shut out Jets

ST. LOUIS -- Justin Faulk scored the lone goal, and Joel Hofer made 24 saves for the St. Louis Blues in a 1-0 win against the Winnipeg Jets at Enterprise Center on Wednesday.

It was Hofer's third shutout of the season and fifth of his NHL career.

“All wins are nice,” said Hofer, a Winnipeg native. “It’s obviously nice to beat them. They’ve obviously become a rival of ours. That was tough the last time we played them (a 4-3 double-overtime loss in Game 7 of the 2025 Western Conference First Round). That was extra motivation for us. It’s just good that we got the win tonight.”

Robert Thomas had an assist for the Blues (13-15-7), who had lost three of their previous four (1-3-0).

“It's hard to know what to expect with the way the season has gone, to be honest,” St. Louis coach Jim Montgomery said. “It was nice to see the way we started the game, the way we did compete. It did turn into the playoff-type game that wasn’t as physical as the playoffs, but it was physical for this regular season, that’s for sure.”

Jonatan Berggren, who was claimed off waivers from the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday, had three shots on goal in 12:45 of ice time in his Blues debut.

“Some high-end passes,” Montgomery said of Berggren. “The backhand one, that's high-end vision there to send in Dalibor Dvorsky on the breakaway and then the slip play he makes in the offensive zone to Pius Suter (in the second period), who almost stuffs it in on the weak side. He had a couple more really connected passes.”

Connor Hellebuyck made 25 saves for the Jets (15-16-2), who are 1-4-1 in their past six games and were shut out for the fourth time this season.

“There was a push on (in the third period), but more than anything in the other two periods, there were spurts for five minutes where it looked like we were doing the right things, five, six minutes and all of the sudden, there was five, six, eight minutes where St. Louis took the game over,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said. “Gave up some rush chances and in the first period, we gave up eight chances on one shift.

“But the third period, there’s looks. We had opportunities, but at the end of the day, we didn’t get enough pucks through. St. Louis did a good job getting in lanes, but we didn’t do a good enough job … creating that chaos around the net front.”

Faulk gave St. Louis a 1-0 lead at 13:17 of the second period after Pavel Buchnevich pressured Jets defenseman Dylan DeMelo in the corner. Buchnevich forced the puck loose for Thomas, who found Faulk coming down the slot for a wrist shot into the top corner over Hellebuyck’s blocker.

“It looked like a little turnover in the corner and ‘Tommer’ put some pressure on them,” Faulk said. “We know he can make those plays and I just jumped up. I don’t know, it looked like [Pius Suter] was coming too. One of us had to grab it, but great play by him and I just tried getting it off as soon as possible.”

The Blues were able to shut down Winnipeg’s top line of Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor and Gabriel Vilardi. Connor’s nine-game point streak came to an end (four goals, nine assists).

St. Louis was 0-for-4 on the power play; Winnipeg was 0-for-2.

“We’ve got to generate some more chances and some more looks than that,” Connor said. “We just weren’t able to get going there, so it’s frustrating.”

NOTES: Hofer’s shutout tied Filip Gustavsson, Ilya Sorokin and Sergei Bobrovsky for the second-highest total in the NHL this season. Only Jesper Wallstedt has more (four). … Jets center Jonathan Toews had one shot on goal and won nine of 11 face-offs in 11:26 of ice time in his 1,100th NHL game. … St. Louis forward Otto Stenberg, a first-round pick (No. 25) in the 2023 NHL Draft, played 13:38 in his NHL debut.