St. Louis Blues 3, Columbus Blue Jackets 2 FINAL

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Ryan Johnson came through with offense just when the St. Louis Blues needed it the most.

Johnson scored the game-winning goal with 3:44 left, and Doug Weight added a goal and an assist to lead the Blues past the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 Monday night.

"Thankfully all their players were kind of all going the other way," Johnson said of his second goal of the season. "Honestly, I was trying to put it to the net."

Johnson benefited from a giveaway by Columbus' Rick Nash, the NHL's leading goal scorer with 23 goals. Nash passed from the half boards in his own end to the middle of the ice and Johnson intercepted it.

"That was a huge goal on a nice individual effort by RJ," coach Joel Quenneville said. "Right now we're a little thin offensively, so it's nice to see guys who don't score often make a nice play like that."

Johnson's shot was a hard one from the left dot that beat Marc Denis high on the glove side.

"I have a tendency to shoot high quite a bit," Johnson said with a chuckle. "The coaches are on me about that."

Keith Tkachuk also had a goal for the Blues, playing the first of 16 games in 34 days.

St. Louis was winless in four (0-2-2). Columbus lost its fifth in a row at home.

"Nobody is pointing fingers, nobody is getting down on one another," said Todd Marchant, who had a goal for the Blue Jackets. "We're just trying to get out of it together as a group."

Geoff Sanderson also scored for Columbus.

Blue Jackets coach Doug MacLean did not meet with reporters after the game.

Blues goaltender Chris Osgood was injured early in the game after being struck in the leg by a puck shot by teammate Bryce Salvador and falling awkwardly. Osgood sprawled on the ice as the Blues scrambled to control the puck in the final seconds of a Columbus power play.

Osgood was helped off and replaced by Brent Johnson, who finished with 22 saves.

Quenneville said the puck deadened a nerve in Osgood's leg. Osgood was hobbling around the locker room after the game.

The teams traded power-play goals in the first period.

Sanderson flipped in his sixth goal from the left hash mark off a pass from Russian rookie Nikolai Zherdev. The Blues countered with a soft goal given up by Denis. Weight skated from the far blue line and threw a backhander from the right dot that trickled through Denis' pads.

"I just tried to get down and get something on the net to get a faceoff down there and kind of calm everybody down," said Weight, who was cut in the mouth by a high stick earlier in the game and was bleeding for the rest of the game. "We had about 10 seconds left (in the power play) and fortunately it went in."

The Blues took the lead midway through the second period when Blue Jackets nemesis Tkachuk scored on a perfect pass from Weight. Weight whistled a centering pass from behind the goal line, and Tkachuk simply put his stick on the ice and deflected in his 17th goal.

Just 13 days earlier, Tkachuk scored with 43 seconds left in overtime to give the Blues a 2-1 win over the Blue Jackets.

Columbus tied it 2-2 at 3:31 of the third when Marchant scored his fourth off a centering pass from David Vyborny. Then the Blues' defense took over.

"In the third we absolutely tic-tac-toed it around and dominated," Weight said.