As Hurricanes open series with resounding win, Jordan Staal leads way: ‘It’s what he does’
His name was on the scoresheet Wednesday night, something that occasionally has little bearing on just how well Jordan Staal played. Some of his best games are not readily apparent, defensive masterclasses that are as notable for what doesn’t happen as what does. And at 34, sometimes he’s more likely to score off his shinpad than with a nasty wrister.
This, though, was everything. All of it. A performance that had skill, savvy, grit and a couple assists to provide tangible reward. Sometimes, Staal leads the Carolina Hurricanes by example. Sometimes, he leads by grabbing the game by the scruff of the neck and throws it against the wall.
If an almost incomprehensibly dominant first period by the Hurricanes set the tone for the series — the Hurricanes had two goals, the New Jersey Devils one shot — Staal set the tone for the Hurricanes, doing a little of everything at both ends of the ice and a lot of a few critical things that lit the path toward a 5-1 Game 1 win.
He won the faceoff on the opening goal, surreptitiously (and illegally) using his hand to shovel the puck back to Brett Pesce for a seeing-eye wrister from the blue line. On a new line with Jack Drury and Martin Necas, not his usual partners in defensive crime, he not only shut down Devils phenom Jack Hughes — limited to two shots, minus-3 — but put Hughes on his seat with a sturdy neutral-zone check.
“Whenever you can get a piece of their best player, it’s going to matter down the line,” Hurricanes forward Jordan Martinook said. “He might not feel it tomorrow, but if you can bump him here, bump him there, he’s going to think twice before he cuts to the middle and does his thing.”
Staal took a hard hit from behind by Ondrej Palat, then a glove to the face from Palat after he unfolded himself back to a standing position, and slammed the bench door when he finally made his way back there, but didn’t miss a shift. And he lugged the puck down the ice on what ended up being Jesper Fast’s empty-net goal, reunited with Fast and Martinook to lock down the win.
It’s easy to take some of this for granted, on a night-by-night basis, when Staal’s steady excellence is almost metronomic over an 82-game season. (The Selke Trophy voters certainly did, with Staal not among the three finalists announced Monday, although those are just consolation prizes since Patrice Bergeron is a stone-cold lock to win it.) And Staal was unhappy with his Game 6 performance against the New York Islanders, a night when it was Sebastian Aho’s turn to single-handedly drag the Hurricanes across the line after two dismal periods.
And Martinook’s incredulous response to that underlines how high Staal’s own standards are: “He wasn’t happy with his Game 6? Last series? He wasn’t happy with that?”
There are also nights where even Staal’s most subtle contributions are written in dazzling neon, when the other team’s best player isn’t just shut down but sat down, when his toughness is apparent for all to see, when he’s leading and the Hurricanes are visibly following.
“It’s what he does,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “He’s not perfect every night. But that’s pretty much how — maybe he doesn’t get on the scoresheet all the time, maybe it doesn’t look all that different than that, usually — that’s kind of how he plays. Tough guy to play against.”
This may not have been a night when the Hurricanes necessarily needed it, rested but not rusty, catching the Devils at an emotional deficit coming off a grueling seven-game series against the New York Rangers. But they got it, because even Staal’s off nights are rarely off nights, and when he’s on, he can tilt the ice toward the Hurricanes and make everyone else look better.
But these are hard miles, and it’s been a painful postseason for Staal, from Matt Martin’s pile-driver from behind in Game 2 of the first round to Palat’s rough ride tonight. While his teammates were going through their postgame workouts, or wandering down the hall to appear in front of the television cameras, Staal was still getting treatment, only 46 hours from doing it all over again.
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