Jordan Staal’s knack for game-winners is no accident. There’s an art to it.
No one in the hockey world really wants to admit it, perhaps because it taps into emotions and inadequacies they would not like to confront, but there’s an art to scoring goals like Jordan Staal’s overtime game-winner Thursday night.
In a game of abundant speed and skill and creativity and hand-eye coordination, sometimes the best play is just as simple as merely getting in the way, being the right body in the right place at the right time.
Where the art comes into it is knowing where the right place is and when is the right time, and that’s where the hockey IQ, vision, savvy and nous of a veteran like Staal, the Carolina Hurricanes’ captain and two-way workhorse center, comes into play.
The ability to read the game, to sense where the play is going and get to a place where your presence alone can change the course of a game or even a playoff series is not something that can be trained or taught. You’re either born with it -- and Jordan isn’t the only Staal brother who was -- or you’re not.
That’s only half of it. There’s also the fearlessness to take the punishment associated with being in that place, which most often is close enough to smell the goalie’s breath. That means being beaten repeatedly in the small of the back or across the arm with a composite stick, and requires the acceptance of choosing to remain in an uncomfortable position when it would be easier to move away.
So Staal can make a deprecating quip about being in the right place in overtime Thursday -- yet again! -- that Sebastian Aho’s flash-and-dazzle spin move would graze Staal’s left shin on its way past the nigh-impregnable Andrei Vasilevskiy to cut the Tampa Bay Lightning’s series lead to 2-1, but there’s a lot of truth buried in that humor.
“My left leg’s hot,” Staal said Friday. “Hopefully it’ll stay hot.”
It’s no joke. Staal has a history of scoring big goals in the postseason, and not just this spring, where he won Game 5 of the first-round series against the Nashville Predators by swatting a rebound out of midair, again within shoving distance of the goalie.
Thursday gave him his third career overtime winner, tying him with the Secret Weapon, Niclas Wallin, for the franchise record. Only five active NHL players have scored more overtime playoff goals than Staal: Corey Perry (five), Patrick Kane (five), Patrice Bergeron (four), Nicklas Backstrom (four) and Hurricanes legend Patrick Marleau (four).
At a certain point, that stops being a coincidence. It’s no accident.
There’s value in that beyond what Staal delivers elsewhere on the ice or in the dressing room. It’s just another way to lead by example.
“I’ve been telling the group we’ve got to get to the net,” Staal said. “That’s where the puck always seems to be going, obviously. The way we play, the more often we’re there, we’re going to get some bounces.”
Meanwhile, as other Hurricanes forwards have fallen by the wayside in the past week -- first Nino Niederreiter, then Vincent Trocheck, now Warren Foegele -- Staal’s role continues to expand and his workload continues to increase.
“When you have a guy who plays in all situations and you rely on him so much, the value of this guy is off the charts,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Then he’s your leader, too.”
Staal now has five goals in nine games this postseason, two in overtime, the continuing extension of a renaissance season that saw him score at a 30-goal pace for the first time in his career at the ripe age of 32. He’s a long-shot Selke Trophy candidate as the NHL’s best defensive forward -- finalists will be announced Sunday -- who will likely be overlooked again, but he has made himself impossible to ignore in the postseason, at either end of the ice.
What Staal has done, and continues to do, is far from easy. His goal Thursday may have looked like a happy accident, but it was the result of a big body and a big hockey brain working together to twist fate in the proper direction.
Hurricanes at Lightning
When: 4 p.m., Saturday
Where: Amalie Arena, Tampa, Fla.
Watch: USA
This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Jordan Staal’s knack for game-winners is no accident. There’s an art to it.."
