The Blues are unable to overcome another multi-goal deficit in their loss to the Golden Knights

They lit small fires in Seattle and San Jose, which they were able to put out with waves of gates. They played both arsonist and firefighter while defeating both the Kraken and the Sharks. Uninjured, the Blues played again in Vegas on Friday evening with a small fire.

This time it scorched them.

The Blues failed to complete another comeback in a 4-3 loss to the Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena, handing St. Louis their first loss of the year and leaving them with a 2-1 loss in their home opener on Tuesday sent home. 0 record. St. Louis fell behind 3-1 and 4-2 on Friday night, cutting Vegas' lead to one goal each time, but couldn't find the equalizer it had earlier in the week.

“Throughout the road trip, it was nice to see the resiliency of this group,” Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said. “Comebacks, it's not the ideal starting position if you're trying to get back up in the third round. We did a great job on this road trip and tried to stick with it. It's hard to play every game like that, but we had a lot of good things. As always, there are things to work on throughout the season.”

Pavel Buchnevich scored two goals and provided an assist for the Blues, while Robert Thomas added one of his own. Jordan Kyrou had two assists in his third straight multi-point game to start the season.

Jordan Binnington made 24 saves, half of them in the second period.

Attempting a comeback has become the norm for this version of the Blues – at least in the first three games of the season. They won despite being down 2-0 in Seattle in the second period. They won in overtime despite losing 4-1 heading into the third period in San Jose.

When the Blues fell behind 4-2 in the third period and Thomas scored with 4:56 left and the Blues went on the power play with 4:12 left in the third period, it must have felt familiar to the 20 men in white on Friday night .

“We have to play 60 minutes,” said Buchnevich. “It's always difficult to come back after two or three goals. It will never happen. We have to play 60 minutes. After two periods we had 12 shots. That's not enough. We have to play the beginning of the game. We’ll be fine.”

In the last power play of the evening, the Blues failed to advance into the offensive zone with clean possession of the ball and failed to score a shot on goal. Zack Bolduc's shot wide of the goal was the team's only shot attempt, which had a man advantage, which was given to them by Noah Hanifin's delay-of-game penalty.

The Blues struggled to recruit Binnington as an extra attacker in the final minutes and were unable to create any quality scoring opportunities in the 6v5 situation.

“I know we're a fighting group here and that's exciting because we're going to be on the other side here and we're going to be on the front foot too,” Parayko said. “When that happens, start banning games too.”

Blues coach Drew Bannister cited “avoidable errors” that led to all four of the Golden Knights' goals.

“When I look at the big picture of the game, I think we made four mistakes that were avoidable and ended up in our net,” Bannister said. “Whether they were mental mistakes that came from two trips, I just think they are avoidable mistakes that, quite frankly, lost us points here.”

For the first two goals, the Blues' top lineup of Brayden Schenn, Thomas and Jake Neighbors were on the ice, perhaps getting too deep in the offensive zone for Las Vegas' odd players to rush in the other direction. The Vegas front line of Barbashev, Eichel and Mark Stone was the best unit on the ice Friday, and the Golden Knights controlled 85.6% of expected goals at 5-on-5 and outscored the Blues 9-4 when they were on the were ice cream.

“They’re fast,” Parayko said. “They make a lot of plays. They work well together, they're obviously very fast. That’s probably their biggest threat, they’re always a threat to score.”

Buchnevich: “They play fast, they work hard. They have confidence at the moment, everyone is playing well, especially Barby. He plays every game he has. You just have to slow it down and stay current.”

The Blues started the season almost differently than a year ago, at least when you look at the general flow of the game. The team that scored first lost all three games St. Louis played. Last year, the team that scored first won 25 games in a row from October 19th to December 9th.

“I think that’s a good benchmark for us,” Bannister said. “We played this team tonight that they think is going to push for the Stanley Cup. These are the teams we have to measure ourselves against. We cannot release shifts. We can't take nights off. It's a good lesson for us. There are some good lessons we can learn and improve upon. Surely we have to be better next Tuesday.”

Buchnevich: “We have chances to win games. We stick with the games every time. That’s a good sign.”