Staal scores 400th NHL goal in Wild victory against Blues

ST. LOUIS -- Eric Staal scored his 400th NHL goal to help the Minnesota Wild to a 5-1 win against the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center on Saturday.

Staal, 34, became the 96th player in NHL history to reach 400. He is the sixth active NHL player to reach the milestone, joining Alex Ovechkin, Patrick Marleau, Ilya Kovalchuk, Sidney Crosby and Marian Gaborik.
"It feels good," Staal said. "I hope there's a lot more yet. I feel like I'm still a young guy. I got a lot more time to play this game.
"It's a special game and I'm grateful every day I'm in it, so I try to prove myself every day. It's cool. I'm sure my kids will have something to say about it tomorrow, which is fun for me, and hopefully, more ahead."
WATCH: [All Wild vs. Blues highlights]
Nick Seeler scored his first NHL goal and had two assists in his 35th game for the Wild (8-3-2), who have won seven of eight. Eric Fehr had a goal and an assist, Jordan Greenway had two assists, and Devan Dubnyk made 15 saves.
"I'm a firm believer that balance wins," Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. "When it's difficult to check all four lines and six 'D', it makes it really hard to play against or match up against a team."

Ryan O'Reilly scored for the Blues (4-5-3), who had won their previous two games. Jake Allen made 40 saves.
The Blues were outshot 45-16 and didn't get their 10th shot on goal until 1:21 into the third period.
"There's not much to say," Blues forward Alexander Steen said. "They just outright beat us tonight."
St. Louis is 2-2-0 in a season-long seven-game homestand. In eight home games this season, the Blues are 3-4-1 and have allowed 34 goals.
"It's unacceptable, right," Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. "This is a place for years that was hard to play [for the opponent]. Now it's not. We've got to get back to that."

The Wild scored twice in 45 seconds in the first to take a 2-0 lead. Staal scored on a redirect at 4:42 to make it 1-0, and Seeler scored on a slap shot through traffic at 5:27 to make it 2-0.
"It's nice to have that first one go in," Seeler said. "It was exciting and I've just tried to get more pucks to the net and create more offense. We played so well as a team tonight. It was a great team win. It was fun."
O'Reilly scored on the power play, the 10th time in 12 games, and fifth straight, the Blues have scored with the man advantage this season, to make it 2-1 at 11:32, but JT Brown's first goal with the Wild made it 3-1 at 18:09 after Blues defenseman Jay Bouwmeester turned the puck over and Brown scored on a breakaway.
"The way I saw that play, yes, his job is to skate there," Blues coach Mike Yeo said of Bouwmeester. "I think maybe he has an option, I think his support wasn't that great. I'm not going to pin it on one guy there."
Matt Dumba brought the lead to 4-1 at 15:32 of the second period on a shot from the slot in which the Blues challenged for offside, and Fehr made it 5-1 at 9:15 of the third on a rebound.

They said it

"I saw him right there. It was a heck of a tip. Not a lot of guys can make that play. It was a really nice tip. I just tried to get it kind of by him and let him do the rest." -- Wild defenseman Nick Seeler on assisting on Eric Staal's 400th NHL goal
"It's not good enough. I'm trying to find answers here, right? You give up a couple goals early, it doesn't matter, teams are going to score goals. We've got to find a way to kind of turn that thing around and took a couple penalties in a row there. Second period, after we had a little bit of momentum, we had a tough time of getting it back." -- Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo

Need to know

Wild forward Mikael Granlund had an assist to extend his point streak to 10 games (six goals, seven assists). ... Wild forward Mikko Koivu won 71 percent of his face-offs (12 of 17). ... O'Reilly extended his point streak to seven games (four goals, eight assists). ... Blues forward Brayden Schenn did not play the third period. Yeo said Schenn, who played 9:39, was sore.

What's next

Wild: At the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday (10:30 p.m. ET; NBCSCA, FS-N, NHL.TV)
Blues: Host the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; FS-MW, FS-CR, NHL.TV)