Eric, Carolina’s long-time captain and a big reason why Jordan signed a 10-year, $60 million contract on July 1, 2012 before ever playing a game with them, was traded to the New York Rangers late in the 2015-16 season.<\/p>\n
Dreary days indeed.<\/p>\n
“I, for sure, wish we were better and a juggernaut like they are now, but that just wasn’t in the cards at the time and that’s not how the team was at that moment,” Eric Staal said. “But I wouldn’t change anything. It was a tremendous experience to be able to play together.”<\/p>\n
And as Jordan reflects on those days, before and after his brother’s departure, he said it makes the journey, the potential he sees in this year’s team and the possibilities that await them even sweeter.<\/p>\n
“There’s so much piled up into one,” Staal said. “Obviously, the ups and downs here, all I’ve personally gone through in this organization, seeing my brother go, just struggling, and battling back and finding ways to be competitive again and having chances, I couldn’t write it up better myself. I’m glad I stuck through it, kept grinding and I am able to be here now.”<\/p>\n
He’s not the only one.<\/p>\n
Eric is watching from afar and marveling at what his brother is still doing in Carolina.<\/p>\n
“I’m just super pumped and thrilled that they are where they are now knowing what we went through those years, him slugging away and him sticking with it after I was gone, just building,” he said. “I left and he stayed and he kind of took the reins from the bottom up. It’s his team. He’s the captain. He’s the leader.”<\/p>\n
Staal’s ability to consistently grind through the struggles, and now in the better days since Rod Brind’Amour took over as coach in 2018 are at the heart of the respect and admiration from those around him.<\/p>\n
“Well, you’re kind of touching on the thing I think that makes him so special,” Brind’Amour said. “It’s 17 years ago he won and there hasn’t been a day that he hasn’t shown up here that he hasn’t played to win. He never cheats a day. He’s not always going to be great, but he comes every day like he wants to win something. That could be in a preseason game. He just does his job.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Now his job is to try to win something very, very special, but it doesn’t change anything with the way he goes about his business. I think that’s the most special thing about him, that consistency over time. Anybody can do it for a short time, but can you answer the bell night in and night out, day in and day out, year in and year out? That’s what he’s been able to do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eric, Carolina’s long-time captain and a big reason why Jordan signed a 10-year, $60 million contract on July…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-671336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}