Fantastic win tonight!!!
PHOENIX (AP) -- For one night, Brian Savage found his scoring touch.
It turned out to be what the Phoenix Coyotes needed to stop playing overtime games.
Savage and Shane Doan each had two goals and an assist, leading the Coyotes to a 5-4 win over the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday night.
"It's been overtime, I think, five times in the last five games, so it looked like this was going that way, too," said Savage, who came in with just two goals after scoring six during his injury-plagued 2002-03 season. "It was great not to have to do that again."
Savage scored the first and last goals of the game, beating St. Louis goaltender Chris Osgood for the second time with 1:45 remaining when he tapped in a rebound of a shot by Doan.
The final goal kept the Coyotes from setting an NHL record with six consecutive overtime contests.
Jeff Taffe also scored and Sean Burke had 14 of his 22 saves in the third period.
Doug Weight, playing for the Blues for the first time in five games, tied his career high with four assists. He saw his first action since completing a suspension incurred for cross-checking Vancouver forward Henrik Sedin in the head on Nov. 6.
"The last three weeks we've been hard to play against," Weight said. "Tonight we weren't."
Dallas Drake, Ryan Johnson, Chris Pronger and Scott Mellanby scored the Blues' goals, and Osgood, who had won four straight, stopped 20 shots.
St. Louis caught the Coyotes' penalty killers in a line change to tie it at 4 early in the third period.
Osgood started the sequence when he came out for a hard clearing pass and fired it to Chris Pronger in the neutral zone. Pronger got the puck to Weight, who passed across to Mellanby just inside the slot.
Mellanby slowed the pass and flicked it between Burke's pads 3:20 in.
Doan gave the Coyotes their first lead since Savage's early goal by scoring twice in the final 3:43 of the second.
He knocked in a rebound after Savage's hard shot caught Osgood in the midsection and knocked him off-balance. Doan made it 4-3 with 53.3 seconds remaining after taking a pass from Daymond Langkow, who had three assists.
The Blues scored on both sides of a power play -- Johnson's short-handed goal and a slap shot by Pronger with an advantage -- early in the second period to take a 3-1 lead.
But Phoenix got back in it with a three-goal burst in the final 6:51, cashing in on the promotion of Taffe from the AHL two days earlier.
The rookie, playing his first game with the Coyotes this season, put a shot under the crossbar after a pass from Radoslav Suchy.
"Whenever you can get that first one out of the way, it's nice, especially the first game coming up here," Taffe said.
Savage scored only 51 seconds in, carrying the puck down the right side, cutting across and floating a backhander past Osgood to the far side.
The momentum seemed to carry over -- the Coyotes outshot the Blues 3-0 during St. Louis' first power play -- and 9-6 in the first period.
But Drake tied it on a play set up by Weight, who went behind the net to get free for a pass out to the slot. Drake beat Burke low on the stick side with 8:34 left in the period.
Despite the end-to-end action, neither coach was impressed.
"We didn't play well at all," St. Louis' Joel Quenneville said. "I think we were looking for an easy game."
Game notes
Toronto (1986-87), New Jersey (twice in 1995-96), Detroit (1996-97), the New York Rangers (1997-98) and Calgary (1998-99) played five straight overtime games. ... The Coyotes beat the Blues 2-1 in overtime Oct. 10 -- one of their nine overtime games. ... Weight, who has 48 points in 43 games against Phoenix, had his third four-assist game, first since Jan. 5, 2002, against Dallas. ... Blues LW Keith Tkachuk, the Coyotes' former captain, served the final game of a three-game suspension imposed for cross-checking San Jose's Rob Davison in the neck on Nov. 13. ... Doan has 300 points in the NHL.
