{"id":543682,"date":"2026-04-06T12:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/543682\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T12:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:08:10","slug":"thomas-breaks-late-tie-to-complete-first-hat-trick-blues-beat-avalanche-3-2-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/543682\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas breaks late tie to complete first hat trick, Blues beat Avalanche 3-2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DENVER (AP) \u2014 Robert Thomas broke a tie with 2:50 left to complete his first NHL hat trick and the St. Louis Blues kept their late postseason charge rolling with a 3-2 victory over the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/avalanche-brent-burns-195e9db0ee538380255546083d109721\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Colorado Avalanche;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Colorado Avalanche&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Colorado Avalanche<\/a> on Sunday night to open a home-and-home set.<\/p>\n<p>The teams will meet again Tuesday night in St. Louis.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The Blues are 13-3-3 since the NHL returned from the Olympic break in late February. They have 78 points as they chase the last Western Conference wild-card spot, which is currently occupied by Nashville with 81 points. Los Angeles (81), San Jose (79) and Winnipeg (78) are in the mix, too.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas pushed his goals total to 21. He scored the winner off Jimmy Snuggerud&#8217;s third assist. Joel Hofer finished with 26 saves, weathering a flurry of activity in the third period after losing a skate blade.<\/p>\n<p>The Avalanche were coming off a 2-0 win over Dallas on Saturday. They\u2019re on the brink of wrapping up the Central Division and top seed in the Western Conference. In addition, they&#8217;re six points ahead of Carolina in the race for the Presidents\u2019 Trophy.<\/p>\n<p>Parker Kelly and Brent Burns scored for Colorado. The 41-year-old Burns also had an assist in his 1,001st straight game. He was honored before the game for No. 1,000, with teammates, past and present, offering congratulations in a video tribute.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 25 shots. The Avalanche were 0 for 3 on the power play.<\/p>\n<p>Ross Colton nearly put the Avalanche up midway through the first period when he knocked in a puck out of the air. But the Blues successfully challenged the play for offside.<\/p>\n<p>Moments later, Thomas scored to make it 1-0. Colorado tied it up on Kelly&#8217;s 20th goal of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Colorado forward Valeri Nichushkin was a late scratch with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP NHL: <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;https&quot;}\" class=\"link \">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER (AP) \u2014 Robert Thomas broke a tie with 2:50 left to complete his first NHL hat trick&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,1772,192,144,5277,196,5,514,1190,793,1123,2409,4,6295,1482,1351,519,534,3922,2071,77],"class_list":{"0":"post-543682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-brent-burns","10":"tag-colorado","11":"tag-colorado-avalanche","12":"tag-coloradoavalanche","13":"tag-dallas","14":"tag-hockey","15":"tag-jimmy-snuggerud","16":"tag-joel-hofer","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-mackenzie-blackwood","19":"tag-nashville","20":"tag-nhl","21":"tag-parker-kelly","22":"tag-robert-thomas","23":"tag-ross-colton","24":"tag-san-jose","25":"tag-st-louis","26":"tag-valeri-nichushkin","27":"tag-western-conference","28":"tag-winnipeg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116357687169293351","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}