Blues Douse Flames

Defenseman Al MacInnis continued his offensive mastery, this time spoiling his former team's home opener.

MacInnis scored the tying and winning goals to give the St. Louis Blues a 4-1 win over Calgary on Wednesday.

MacInnis tied the game 1-1 at 16:35 of the second period on a slapshot from the blue line that beat Grant Fuhr just inside the post.

St. Louis then took the lead less than three minutes later when MacInnis' long floater slipped past Fuhr.

"Even with the veteran team we have in here, the last few minutes of the game we gave them a lot of opportunities and that's not like us, we're usually pretty sound defensively," MacInnis added.

Chris Pronger scored on the power play in the third period and Pierre Turgeon made it 4-1 with an empty net goal. The Blues had opened the season with back-to-back home losses.

Tommy Albelin scored Calgary's only goal. The Flames have lost their first two games of the season.

After being pulled in the second period of his first start in San Jose when he gave up four goals on 16 shots, Fuhr was better in his first home start.

He recorded seven consecutive saves less than three minutes into the game and had 25 overall.

"We had a lot of chances and a lot of shots tonight," MacInnis said. "He (Fuhr) is going to give them a chance to win a lot of hockey games. It's still early anI'm convinced that Grant's got a lot of good hockey left in him."

"We basically got a couple of bad breaks and we ended up losing the game," said Fuhr, who played the previous four seasons in St. Louis. "If we get a little bit of luck, those shots bounce wide, but that's just the way things are going right now."

The Flames took a 1-0 lead 4:21 into the second when Albelin beat Jamie McLennan.

McLennan finished with 20 saves in his first start of the season, improving to a career 3-0-0 against Calgary.

"This is a real nice win," said McLennan. "We went 0-2 at home on that first homestand that was tough, the guys really wanted to win those."

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