Patrick Kane scores two, but Blues — despite scary injury — pound Blackhawks 7-3

ST. LOUIS — The good news from the Blackhawks’ 7-3 loss to the Blues: Patrick Kane went off again. His two goals and an assist Saturday gave him 59 career points (in 60 games) against St. Louis, his highest total against any opponent in the NHL. He also took the league lead in goals with 11 in the team’s first 11 games.

“Still early in the season,” he said. “I’ll take it with a grain of salt, but it’s always nice to get off to a good start.”

It was Kane’s 27th game with three or more points since the start of the 2015-16 season. Only the Oilers’ Connor McDavid has had more such games in that span, with 31. The Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin also has 27.

So the Hawks had that going for them, right?

There was enough bad in this one that it sounded strange when coach Joel Quenneville called it a great game.

A seemingly unready Hawks team gave up quick goals to Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko to open the first and second periods. And they took their collective foot off the pedal late, allowing Alex Steen to tack on a seventh goal with 16 seconds left in the immediate aftermath of a fight between defenseman Brent Seabrook and Blues center Ivan Barbashev.

In between, the Hawks were outplayed some more by a rival that had been catching a lot of grief for blowing leads and coughing up games. After having lost twice to the Hawks in overtime already this season, the Blues were fired up for some payback.

“We knew they were going to be ready [with] the talk around their team lately,” defenseman Duncan Keith said. “So that’s on us.”

Back to reality

Cam Ward was in goal for the Hawks for the first two meetings between these teams. That made this the Blues’ first look at Corey Crawford, who came in having allowed only one goal in each of his last three games, all victories.

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Six goals allowed by Crawford later — the Blues also had an empty-netter — we can stop talking about the veteran’s gaudy early-season stats for a while.

Blues’ Allen knocked out

Blues goaltender Jake Allen was knocked from the game late in the second period when teammate Zach Sanford crashed into him while trying to break up a pass to Hawks forward Brandon Saad.

After appearing to take the brunt of the blow to his head, Allen was motionless on his stomach for several seconds and eventually helped off the ice.

Chad Johnson replaced him in net and held the Hawks scoreless the rest of the way. It was the first time this season that an opponent failed to score on the Blues in the third period.