Eric Staal got his 400th career goal to lead the Minnesota Wild to a 5-1 victory over the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night. Staal became just the 96th player in NHL history to reach the milestone, accomplishing the feat less than five minutes into the game. He joined Alex Ovechkin, Patrick Marleau, Ilya Kovalchuk, Sidney Crosby, and Marian Gaborik as the only active players with the mark. Nick Seeler, J.T. Brown, Matt Dumba and Eric Fehr also scored for the Wild. Devan Dubnyk stopped 15 shots. Ryan O’Reilly scored for St. Louis, and Jake Allen finished with 40 saves. Staal, who began his career in NHL and skated in his 1,100th game on Oct. 19th, opened the scoring at 4:42 of the first period with his fifth of the season. Just five seconds later, Seeler got the first of his career as he beat Allen with a slap shot from the left circle to make it 2-0. He also had two assists on the night for the first three point game of his career. The Blues cut the lead in half as O’Reilly flipped the puck stick side past Dubnyk on the power play at 11:32. O’Reilly has now scored at least one point in seven consecutive games.
The Wild restored their two-goal lead with 1:51 left in the first when Brown broke away on a turnover from Jay Bouwmeester and blasted it over Allen’s left shoulder for Minnesota’s first unassisted goal and his first of the season. The lone score of the second period came with 4 1/2 minutes left when Brayden Schenn lost the puck in the neutral zone and Mikael Granlund passed it ahead to defenseman Dumba for his his fourth. St. Louis challenged the play for offsides, but video replay upheld the initial call. Granlund now has a point in 10 straight games. Schenn was not on the bench and did not play in the third period, for an undisclosed reason. Fehr scored his second of the season at 9:15 of the third to cap the scoring.
