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Staal finds new life in Minnesota

Thunder Bay forward has found new hockey life with the Wild, as he enters the third and final year of his contract.
Eric Staal 3
Eric Staal takes warm-ups on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017 prior to the Minnesota Wild's game against the St. Louis Blues at the Xcel Energy Centre (Leith Dunick, tbnewswatch.com).

THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay's Eric Staal, at this stage of his hockey career, likely hasn’t done quite enough to warrant serious consideration for the hall of fame.

But he’s inching closer and closer to the conversation.

With a Stanley Cup title and Olympic gold medal on his resume, the 33-year-old Staal is also quietly compiling a pretty impressive statistical line and working his way up the National Hockey League’s all-time scoring charts.

His career revived with the Minnesota Wild, the lanky forward’s 78-point campaign in 2017-18 gives him 395 goals and 922 points in 1,093 games.

The list of players he passed this past season on the scoring chart reads like a veritable who’s who of hall-of-fame talent: Ted Linday, Yvan Cournoyer, Bill Barber, Peter Forsberg, Brad Park, Scott Stevens and Bobby Orr, to name just a few.

Staal, for his part, isn’t too concerned about his body of work, at least not yet. There’s still too much hockey left to play, he said recently.

“I don’t look at that,” he said. “Maybe when it’s all said and done, you focus more in on that, when it’s over. For me, I feel like I have a number of years left that hopefully I can be an impact player. If I do that, we’ll let the chips fall where they do, as far as career numbers go.

“My biggest thing is trying to help the team that I’m on be successful, and that’s the Minnesota – and I’m enjoying doing that.”

The Wild in 2016 took a huge chance on Staal, whose point total had steadily declined, from 61 in 2013-14 with the Carolina Hurricanes, to just 39 the following season, when he was dealt to the New York Rangers at the trade deadline.

He’d gone five seasons without hitting the 30-goal mark, registering just 13 in 2015-16.

Minnesota inked Staal to a bargain-basement, three-year, $10.5-million deal, which has one year remaining – while working a deal with Vegas Golden Knights to ignore him in last year’s expansion draft, in which he was left unprotected.

Staal responded with a 42-goal campaign, the fourth-best total posted last season – one better than Edmonton Oilers phenom Connor McDavid.

He said relocating the Twin Cities and getting his career back on track has made hockey fun again.

“I believed in my own ability to get back to the level I was at a number of years earlier, but I had to prove it and I had to do it,” Staal said.

“I’ve been able to do that on a good team – a great team. We’ve got a good group of guys, I’ve been in a position to be successful and my confidence has gotten stronger the last few years being there.”

Unrestricted free agency is pending after the 2018-19 season, a free-agent class that could include the likes of Erik Karlsson, Tyler Seguin, Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky.

He knows he’s going to be asked all season long about his future, and his play will dictate how much interest there is in signing him.

With Paul Fenton newly installed as the Wild’s general manager, Staal said he’s taking a wait-and-see approach before discussing his long-term future with the organization.

“We’ll see what he envisions. I know that I love playing there. It’s been a good fit for me. I feel like I’ve got a number of good years left to be a contributor and if it’s there, hopefully, we’ll see how it plays out.”



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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