Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm Steel defenseman John Tsouroullis (left) tries to get past Chase Morgan of the St. Louis Junior Blues during the first period Friday at the New Ulm Civic Center.

NEW ULM — The St Louis Junior Blues broke open a scoreless game with three second-period goals and went on to top the New Ulm Steel 6-1 Friday night in an NA3HL game at the New Ulm Civic Center.

Evan Ross and Clayton Dawe each scored two goals for the Junior Blues.

Denis Denisov scored the lone goal for the Steel, with Stanislav Danaev getting the assist. It was Denisov’s first goal for the Steel.

Junior Blues goalie William Oliver stopped 27 of 28 New Ulm shots, while Steel goalie A.J. Cohen stopped 19 of 24 shots, with the last St. Louis goal coming on an open net.

“St. Louis is a younger, skilled team and when we decide that we do not want to play defense, they are going to capitalize,” Steel coach Zach Stepan said. “And there was a span of about five minutes where we decided we did not want to play defense and they capitalized.”

It was a six-minute span midway through the second period that saw a scoreless game turn into a 3-0 St. Louis lead that the Steel could not recover from.

Goals from Clayton Dawe, Joey Solimando and Chase Morgan gave the Junior Blues that three goal lead at the 12:05 mark despite each team having 15 shots on goal.

The Steel cut the lead to 3-1 early in the third period when the Russian Connection of Danaev to Denson got New Ulm on the board at the 1:42 mark of the period.

But that was as close as New Ulm got.

St. Louis repeated what they did early in the second period as it scored three unanswered goals — this time in a span of just over nine minutes — to secure the win.

The third period was also one that turned physical as two St. Louis players — Mike Ivory and Joey Solimando — and Steel player Parker Dorn — each received 10-minute misconduct penalties.

“When you play a team like that, they are going to capitalize when they start getting under your skin, and that goes back to that mental part of the game,” Stepan said. “Our first period was really good, but when we get on that emotional roller coaster — our highs are really good and our downs are really bad.”

The Steel host St. Louis again at 7:10 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, at the New Ulm Civic Center.