Eric Staal’s jersey retirement bridges the gap between two eras of Hurricanes hockey
There is no one among this current group of Carolina Hurricanes who embodies all of this team’s hopes and fears and virtues and weaknesses. The coach sets the tone. An ensemble cast of stars carries the weight. No one piece is bigger than any other.
This current era is very different from the one that preceded it, when everything seemed to revolve around one player. The highs were so high. The lows, lower and lower.
For a decade, Eric Staal played that central role for the Hurricanes, on and off the ice, in good times and bad. He was the unquestioned star. He was at the core of the triumphs. And when things turned for the worse, he became the vessel that absorbed all of the complaints, even if the root causes of so many of them were far beyond his control.
For all that time, from a Stanley Cup championship to another playoff run to an improbable All-Star Game to the beginning of a playoff drought that would outlast Staal, he was the avatar of everything the Hurricanes did, won or lost. He was the elite player who delivered success. He was the captain who bore the burden of failure.
Other players came and went, but Staal was the fulcrum of a generation of Hurricanes hockey. Sometimes, in the latter years, it seemed like he was the Hurricanes, a human reminder of past glory during the grim slog of seasons going nowhere.
But it’s fitting that his No. 12 will be placed among the rafters Sunday, his retired jersey joining those of Rod Brind’Amour and Ron Francis and Glen Wesley, because there are three eras in this franchise’s history, and Staal defined one.
The first generation tramped south from Hartford, opened what is now the Lenovo Center, put down the first real roots here with the unforgettable run to the Stanley Cup finals in 2002 — and then bottomed out the next season.
Those dead-last Hurricanes couldn’t even win the draft lottery, but they did end up with Staal. Three of their names already hang in those rafters — Brind’Amour, Francis and Wesley. Wesley and Brind’Amour hung around into the next generation, but Staal embodied it.
Brind’Amour was the captain, but Staal led the NHL in playoff scoring in 2006 and scored the most improbable goal in the entire history of the franchise three years later to cap off the Shock at the Rock. At the All-Star Game in 2011, the moment that was supposed to cement the Hurricanes’ status as the model non-traditional franchise, Staal was on common ground with Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin and, as it turned out, fellow Thunder Bay native Patrick Sharp, the unlikely MVP.
Then, depression set in.
The mantle went from Francis and Wesley to Brind’Amour to Staal, and he carried it alone for a long time, until it was no longer a privilege. That era didn’t end with his departure in 2016, but the sale of the team two years later.
There are links to that past, of course: Another Staal is the captain now, younger brother Jordan, achieving the success here the two couldn’t attain together; Brind’Amour is the coach who managed to translate the old culture into a new one. But the connections to the previous era have otherwise been severed, degree by degree. No one has been asked to carry burdens that aren’t theirs to carry. That ended when Staal was traded away.
New moments have joined the old, a team no longer stuck in the past. That page has been turned. Eric Staal was a playoff opponent in 2023, an interested observer in 2024, an honoree in 2025. It’s a clean break now.
Recognizing him like this bridges that gap and closes the circle. He is again embraced among the fold, once and for all, celebrating all the moments he helped create here, ones we still talk about almost two decades later — by choice, now, not necessity.
On Sunday, a new era looks back on the old, with fondness.
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This story was originally published January 10, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Eric Staal’s jersey retirement bridges the gap between two eras of Hurricanes hockey."
