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ST. LOUIS -- Vladimir Tarasenko was never worried.The right wing simply took the St. Louis Blues early season offensive woes in stride.I heard the words that everyone was saying our offense was not so good, Tarasenko said. But, we believed in each other and we believed in our game.That patience has paid off of late.Tarasenko scored three goals and Kevin Shattenkirk added two to lead the Blues to a 5-4 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night.The Blues have won three in a row and six straight at home.Tampa Bay lost its season-high fourth consecutive game.Jake Allen made 22 saves in improving to 12-3-3.St. Louis has scored three goals or more in each of its last nine games after an earlier string of six successive games with one goal or less.Weve been simplifying things and getting a lot of chances, Shattenkirk said. Everything is just kind of going our way.Tarasenko, who leads the team with 13 goals, recorded his fourth career hat trick. He scored twice in the games opening 9:37 to stake his team to a 2-0 lead.His early game outburst set the tone for the rest of the contest.We shot the puck at the right times, people were in position, St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock said. It was great to see.Tarasenko, known for his speed and puck-handling skills, scored his second goal on a rare one-timer off a perfect pass from Alexander Steen, who added three assists in his return after missing six games with a shoulder injury.The soft-spoken, Russian-born Tarasenko has nine goals and eight assists in his last 13 games.Its good to see him playing like this, Steen said. Hes been lethal for us. His hat trick goal was big, a timely goal.Shattenkirk, who also had two assists, added two power-play goals, the second coming just 1:44 into second period for a 4-1 lead.Cedric Paquette scored twice for the Lightning, who have been outscored 19-9 during the four-game skid.Nikita Kucherov and Tyler Johnson also scored for Tampa Bay. Paquettes second goal trimmed the deficit to 5-4 with 8:02 remaining in the third period.I thought we deserved points, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. Im not going to sit here and say we deserved to win the game. But we definitely deserved points.St. Louis has won its last five at home against the Lightning, who last won in St. Louis on Dec. 18, 2009.The Blues are 9-0-2 in their last 11 home games.Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy gave up four goals on 16 shots and was replaced by St. Louis native Ben Bishop early in the second period.I thought we gave it an honest effort, Paquette said. It was a pretty good game. But (to lose), its disappointing.Game notes The Lightning recalled RW Joel Vermin and LW Michael Bournival from Syracuse of the AHL. ... St. Louis leads the overall series with Tampa Bay 21-11-3. ... Tampa Bay D Anton Stralman returned to the lineup after missing nine games due to an upper body injury. ... Blues LW David Perron had a career-best eight-game point streak snapped. ... Bishop did not start in back-to-back games for the first time this season. ... St. Louis C Paul Stastny played in his 700th NHL game.UP NEXT:Lightning: Return home after three-game trip to host Washington on Saturday.Blues: Host Winnipeg on Saturday in the fourth of five straight games at home. Swell Bottle Canada . Tests earlier this week revealed a Grade 2 left hamstring strain for Sabathia, who was hurt in last Fridays start against San Francisco. Its an injury that will require about eight weeks to heal. He finished a disappointing campaign just 14-13 with a career-worst 4. Cheap Swell Water Bottle Canada . The injury bothered Bledsoe in the Suns victory over the Clippers on Monday and he sat out the teams home loss to Memphis on Thursday night. http://www.swellbottlesaleclearance.com/swell-water-bottle-wood-wholesale.html . In what the team had called a retirement, Ryan said Thursday that he is resigning as chief executive of the Rangers in a move effective at the end of this month. Marble Water Bottle Cheap . Perez, 35, posted a 1-2 record with a 3.69 earned-run average in 19 relief appearances last season. His season ended Aug. 9 due to a torn ligament in his left elbow. Perez joins infielder Andy LaRoche and catcher Mike Nickeas with minor-league agreements for 2014 that include invitations to attend spring training. Swell Water Bottle Canada .com) - The Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks both take aim at their first wins of the season on Saturday, as the Canucks open their home slate at Rogers Arena. NEW YORK -- Two days after the New York Mets took him in the 19th round of the baseball draft this June, Gary Cornish boarded a 6:40 a.m. flight from Phoenix to John F. Kennedy Airport, took his physical and checked into his new home, the Red Lion Inn & Suites in downtown Brooklyn.Cornish agreed to a $10,000 signing bonus and was assigned to the Cyclones of the Class A New York-Penn League. Like most new minor leaguers, his initial salary is $1,100 a month. After a $100 deduction for hotel housing, $40 in clubhouse dues to pay the equipment kids and taxes, the 21-year-old pitchers biweekly take-home pay is about $380, less than the cost of some Mets premium tickets at Citi Field.Some minor leaguers are suing Major League Baseball in an effort to get more. Cornish texts his parents in Scottsdale, Arizona, when he needs money to pay the bills, and they transfer funds to his account.Its pretty much the same that they helped me out while I was at college, same type of allowance-type thing, he said.Known for long bus rides between often picturesque ballparks, the minor leagues are hamlets of hope populated by a few bonus babies and thousands of conventional kids trying to grind their way up the pecking order to the sports highest level.MCU Park, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, is just a 22-mile drive from Citi Field. But minor leaguers at the bottom of baseballs player development pyramid, who dont have a union, live in a different financial universe than the 1 percenters on the National League champions, covered by the Major League Baseball Players Association.Garrett Broshuis, a minor league pitcher from 2004-09 who later became a lawyer, wants to lessen the gap. Representing several players, he filed a lawsuit against MLB, then-commissioner Bud Selig and the 30 teams in federal court in San Francisco two years ago, claiming violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and state minimum wage and overtime requirements for a workweek they estimated at 50-to-60 hours.We want to change MLBs pay practices to make sure minor leaguers are receiving at least the minimum wage, Broshuis said. Theyre stuffing six guys into a two-bedroom apartment, sleeping on air mattresses. These guys are the future of major league organizations and people are coming to watch them play and theres no reason to force them to live in that fashion.MLB and the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, which governs the minors, argue laws on minimum wages and overtime never were intended to cover sports, likening players to artists and musicians.A $9 billion industry, MLB rummages the globe for amateur talent. While signing bonuses for players in this years draft ranged as high as $6.2 million, 276 of 919 drafted players, or more than a quarter, agreed to $10,000 or less.Nick Sergakis, a 23-year-old outfielder from Columbus, Ohio, agreed to a $5,000 bonus after the Mets selected him from Ohio State on the 23rd round with the 700th pick. His season cut short in August by a broken shoulder blade, he returned home to Columbus, and will live with two other minor leaguers he knows from college. His focus will be workouts to get ready for 2017.Im doing what I enjoy doing -- first year doing it. Its not terrible, he said. Im going to have to look for a job.Cornish and Sergakis are not part of the suit, and they focus on working their way up. Minimum monthly salaries for the five-month season rise to $1,500 at Double-A and $2,150 at Trriple-A, and players receive a $25 per diem on the road and dinner at the ballpark following games.dddddddddddd Eating well often is an afterthought.Cyclones are housed two to a room in a seven-story hotel in an industrial, just-starting-to-gentrify area of Boerum Hill. Cornish, 6-foot-3 with dark hair, a pitchers build and a ballplayers confident gait, has heard gunshots while walking down the street.Accustomed to nutritious meals as an athlete at the University of San Diego, Cornish tries to avoid postgame pizza in the clubhouse and stops on the road at McDonalds and Burger King.Some of the guys complain about that. Some are like, well, Ill make the best out of it. And some just dont eat it because they will figure something else out somehow, he said.So the 225-pound player gets up around noon when the team is home and makes the block-and-a-half walk most days to Mingos Sandwich Factory, a bodega where $13.50 gets him a breakfast burrito and iced coffee plus a turkey sandwich he takes to the ballpark.Big baseball money could be years away. Or never.On the golden day a player is called up to the big leagues, his minimum salary shoots up to $507,500 annually and the daily meal and tip allowance on the road rises to $100.50.First baseman/outfielder Aaron Senne, a 10th-round pick of the Florida Marlins in 2009 who retired in 2013, sued on Feb. 7, 2014, along with two other retired players who had been lower-round selections: Kansas City infielder Michael Liberto and San Francisco pitcher Oliver Odle. The sides are disputing whether it should be a class-action suit, and a trial date is uncertain.Meanwhile, players who received large signing bonuses watch teammates scrape by.Its terrible. I feel bad, said Philadelphia outfielder Dylan Cozens, who played against Cornish in scout ball and got a $659,800 bonus after he was drafted in the second round in 2012. I see guys in their hotels, they buy a pot and a stove and they cook every meal in their hotel room instead of eating out because they cant afford to eat out.MLB appears reluctant to negotiate with plaintiffs because other players would not be bound by a settlement and could file additional suits.This is not a dollars-and-cents issue, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said. It is the irrationality of the application of traditional workplace overtime rules to minor league baseball players. It just makes no sense. I want to take extra BP -- am I working, or am I not working? Travel time -- is every moment that youre on a bus, is that your commute that you dont get paid for or is that working time? Wheres the clock? Whos going to punch a clock to keep track of those hours? When youre eating in a clubhouse with a spread that the employer provided, is that working time or is that your lunch break?Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican, introduced the Save Americas Pastime Act in June that would amend the FLSA to state no employer could be subject to liability under that law for work performed by minor league baseball players.While the lawyers and lobbyists fight, players try to subsist and rise. Cornish could not do it without his father, who works in medical sales, and his mother, employed by Williams-Sonoma.I cant complain, Cornish said. But at the same time I have a girl back in Scottsdale whos a nurse and makes 10 times as much as me. ' ' '