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Jordan Staal reflects on 2014 pre-season injury and its impacts

Jordan Staal’s 2014-15 season hadn’t yet started and he was already on the sidelines.
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Thunder Bay's Jordan Staal reflects on the pre-season leg injury that took him out of the game for three months in 2014. File Photo Aug. 5, 2015. (File Photo, tbnewswatch.com)

Jordan Staal’s 2014-15 season hadn’t yet started and he was already on the sidelines.

The Thunder Bay forward, hit by Buffalo’s Josh Gorges in a pre-season contest, suffered a broken leg shelving the 6-foot-4, 220-pound power forward for three months.

What lay ahead was the least productive of Staal’s nine NHL seasons. He scored just six goals in 46 games with the Carolina Hurricanes and totaled just 24 points and the team missed the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons.

“It was not the start I wanted, obviously,” Staal said in July, taking to the ice for the annual Easter Seals Celebrity Skate.

“With a big injury like that it’s tough to sit on the couch for three months and jump back into the NHL after you’re done healing up. I felt pretty comfortable with my game when I came back, I felt the team was playing pretty good.”

The Hurricanes just never managed to gain any traction in the competitive NHL Eastern Conference, finishing 30-41-11, their 71 points 27 shy of a post-season berth and ahead of only lowly Toronto and Buffalo in the East and Edmonton and Arizona in the West.

“It was tough, but hopefully we’ll have a better shot next year,” Staal said.

Of course, when teams are losing and bottoming out in the standings, it doesn’t take long for the trade rumours to start swirling.

Older brother Eric, the Hurricanes captain, and former Conn Smythe Trophy-winning goaltender Cam Ward were both subject to plenty of trade speculation.

The eldest Staal is entering the final year of his contract and said he’d like to stay in Carolina if a deal can get done.

Jordan, on the other hand is set to start the third year of a monstrous 10-year, $60-million deal.

That didn’t stop the speculation that he too, might be on the trading block.

A return to Pittsburgh was the hottest rumour floating around as the NHL trade deadline came and went, but the deal never materialized – and with the Penguins landing former Leaf forward Phil Kessel, it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Staal, who has 151 goals and 192 assists in 607 NHL games, said he tried to ignore the trade talk. At any rate, he didn’t put much weight into any of it.

“Rumours are rumours,” he said. “I’ve been named in quite a few rumours over my career and I know every player has.

“There are times when you know they’re more than rumours, but for right now I know I’m helpful in Carolina and I know they want me there and I want to be there. That’s all that really matters.”

Staal and the Hurricanes open the 2015-16 season on Oct. 8 in Nashville.  



Leith Dunick

About the Author: Leith Dunick

A proud Nova Scotian who has called Thunder Bay home since 2002, Leith is Dougall Media's director of news, but still likes to tell your stories too. Wants his Expos back and to see Neil Young at least one more time. Twitter: @LeithDunick
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