Carolina loses its Conn Smythe captain to a warmup injury
Jordan Staal tore a calf muscle before Sunday's win in Philadelphia and will miss one to two months of the title defense.
Carolina will keep winning games without Jordan Staal. What it loses is the guy who makes the other team's best line miserable, and that's a lot harder to replace than a scorer.
The Hurricanes' captain is out one to two months with a torn calf muscle, Rod Brind'Amour said Tuesday. Staal got hurt in warmups before Sunday's 4-1 win in Philadelphia. "A freaky thing, but it is what it is," Brind'Amour said.
Freaky is the word. The reigning Conn Smythe winner, the guy who scored six goals in the Cup Final, didn't block a shot or eat a hit. He got hurt before the puck dropped.
The Ferda number: 124. That's how many faceoffs Staal took in six games, the most on the team, and he won 55.6 percent of them, by our count. He also leads Carolina forwards in short-handed ice time at 2:53 a night, on a penalty kill that's running at 92.9 percent, per NHL data.
That's the part of the sheet he was carrying. He wasn't scoring: Staal has zero points through six games, so the box score won't miss him. The matchup card will. "He gets the tough matchups every night," Brind'Amour said.
Who fills it
Mark Jankowski already got the first audition. He moved up from the fourth line on Sunday to center Nikolaj Ehlers and Jordan Martinook, played 15:48 with 2:49 of it short-handed, and scored. That's a goal in four straight games for Jankowski.
The dot is the worry. Jankowski is winning 45.7 percent of his draws this season, by our count, about ten points behind Staal. Jesperi Kotkaniemi is expected back in the lineup, and Carolina is expected to recall a forward. Seth Jarvis is still working back from shoulder surgery, so the depth was already thin.
The champs aren't asking for sympathy
Carolina is 5-1-1, first in the Metropolitan Division, and riding a five-game winning streak. The Hurricanes have outscored opponents by 14 goals over those five, per NHL data. They host Washington tonight.
"We've had a lot of injuries over the years and we're just going to have to keep figuring it out," Brind'Amour said. That's the most Carolina sentence ever spoken, and it's usually true.
Staal has played 978 regular-season games for this franchise. The system was built around players like him, so it has a habit of surviving without any one of them.
Ferda take: Carolina stays on top of the Metro while Staal is out, because the structure doesn't care who's wearing the C on a given night. The penalty kill is where it shows. Our call: the PK dips below 85 percent before he's back, and Carolina leans on Jankowski harder than anyone planned in September.
