It’s unfair to his legacy that the lasting image of Eric Staal in a Carolina Hurricanes uniform is him sitting alone at the center of the team’s U-shaped locker room after a loss awaiting the media.
While I have written about the Hurricanes for nearly two decades, I didn’t start covering the team full time until February 2016, just before Staal’s time with the team ended. I had still been around the locker room enough to see the strain years of losing had put on Staal, who retired from hockey last week after signing a one-day contract with Carolina.
Surrounded by an overmatched supporting cast provided by an owner unwilling to spend to the salary cap, Staal toiled in Raleigh unable to recapture the magic of the 2005-06 season when Carolina improbably won the Stanley Cup.
Instead, there was Staal, night after night trying to find hope in a hopeless situation, never hiding from results that shouldn’t have been his alone to explain.
For those who didn’t experience it, here is what happened in 2005-06.
The NHL and NHL Players Association finally agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement, instituting a salary cap after the league shut down for a season because of the warring factions’ standoff.
The salary cap gave teams like the Hurricanes a fighting chance, one Carolina didn’t have in when it lost the 2002 Stanley Cup final to a team with twice its payroll, the Detroit Red Wings.
As teams pared their rosters to come in compliance with the league’s new rules, the Hurricanes added some firepower at discounted prices and GM Jim Rutherford unearthed some hidden gems.
Staal, meanwhile, had spent the previous year tearing up the American Hockey League. The second overall pick in the 2003 NHL Draft — now widely considered the best in league history — finished 10th in AHL scoring for the Lowell Lock Monsters in his second professional season.
Still, no one could have imagined the season Staal would have when the NHL returned.
His 45 goals in 2005-06 were 14 more than the 31 Brind’Amour and Williams each scored, and Staal’s 100 points outpaced Williams and Stillman by 24.
In the opening round of the playoffs, his Game 3 overtime power play goal in Montreal cut a 2-0 series deficit in half. Carolina — with rookie Cam Ward now in goal — won the next three games of the series to advance.
In Game 2 of the next round after the Devils, Staal tied the game with three seconds remaining to force OT, which ended on Niclas Wallin’s 4-on-4 goal. The Hurricanes completed a gentleman’s sweep and advanced to the Eastern Conference final.
He had five points against Buffalo and eight more against the Oilers — both seven-game series — to finish with a league-leading 28 postseason points as Carolina won its first Stanley Cup. Ward was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy, but no one would have blinked had it been Staal or Brind’Amour instead named playoff MVP.
There were other moments during Staal’s dozen seasons with the Hurricanes — winning All-Star Game MVP in Atlanta in 2008 and captaining the Eastern Conference when the event was held in Raleigh in 2011, along with Carolina’s run to the Eastern Conference final in 2009 that included his “Shock at the Rock” game-winner in New Jersey — but he spent more years watching the playoffs from home than participating in them.
Even if he had, nothing could eclipse what Staal and the Hurricanes accomplished in 2005-06.
One of 23 players with “triple gold” (Stanley Cup, Olympic gold and World Championship gold) status, Staal totaled 480 goals and more than 1,110 career points in nearly 1,500 career NHL regular season and playoff games.
People, and definitely athletes, are often a product of their environment. What would Barry Sanders’ career have looked like had he not spent the entirety of it with the Detroit Lions? How many NASCAR Cup Series titles would Mark Martin have won were it not for Dale Earnhardt Sr.? How many players missed out on an NBA championship ring because they played in the same era as Michael Jordan?
Staal’s career winded through six cities over 18 seasons, and he reached the Cup final three times, all with different teams. But he will be remembered as the face of the Carolina Hurricanes, who announced they will retire his No. 12 on Jan. 12 against the Anaheim Ducks at PNC Arena.
The only thing left will be whether or not the Hockey Hall of Fame comes calling for the oldest Staal brother. The 2003 draft is a who’s who of the first two decades of the 2000s, and only one player — Joe Pavelski — has more goals or points than Staal from that class.
When Staal’s number is retired during a game at PNC Arena, the highlights will be plentiful, especially from that 2005-06 season. What the video board won’t show is Staal, during that final handful of years in Raleigh, taking a deep breath before being converged on after another loss in yet another lost season.
But to remember Staal at some of his lowest points as a professional is to also realize how he handled those situations — with the same grace with which he played the game.
“The ultimate measure of a man,” Martin Luther King Jr. said, “is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Eric Staal — a lanky kid from Thunder Bay, Ontario, who helped bring a Stanley Cup to North Carolina and kept the franchise afloat through its darkest days — can look back at his hockey career and stand proud.
