Staal NOT being sent down

They had to decide before tomorrow night's game.

TTSBURGH -- Jordan Staal, the 18-year-old center who has been one of the surprise stars of the NHL season, is staying with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

When the season began, the Penguins were expected to return Staal, the No. 2 pick in the June draft, to his junior team in Peterborough, Ontario, after nine games. The move would have prevented the first year of Staal's three-year entry-level contract from kicking in.


However, Staal has played so well he moved up to the Penguins' No. 2 line last week after fellow rookie Evgeni Malkin shifted to the top line with Sidney Crosby. Staal has four goals and an assist in nine games and played more than 17 minutes in the Penguins' 8-2 victory at Philadelphia on Saturday.

The 6-foot-4 Staal's long reach and stickhandling have made him one of the most-used penalty killers on a team that is off to a 6-3 start. The Penguins began last season by losing their first nine games.

"Jordan has earned a spot on our roster," Penguins general manager Ray Shero said. "We all knew about his skill level when we drafted him, but his work ethic, maturity and consistent effort have enabled him to make what normally is a difficult transition for a teenager."

The Penguins are returning 19-year-old defenseman Kristopher Letang to Val d'Or of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Letang had two goals in seven games before being scratched from the Penguins' last two games.

If the Penguins had sent Staal back to his junior team, he could not have rejoined them until Peterborough's season was over. He also could not have been sent to one of their minor league teams.

By deciding to keep Staal, the Penguins face the prospect that both he and Malkin -- who has five goals in his first five games -- will become restricted free agents following the 2008-09 season. The Penguins can retain both by matching any offers to them.

Previously, the Penguins expected that Crosby (2008), Malkin (2009) and Staal (2010) would become restricted free agents in consecutive seasons, rather than having two do so in the same year.

When Staal, Letang and the 19-year-old Crosby scored goals against the Rangers on Oct. 12, it was the first time in 24 years three teenagers scored in the same game for an NHL team.

 

good for Jordan.

All that really means to him is that his rookie year starts now, but PIT did that with Fleury before and it bit them because his NHL development got stunted (IMOMFO).

 

Si article on the whole clan.

-------------------------------------------------------

Like the sacred Montreal Forum and seismic Chicago Stadium and other storied hockey barns that exist only in the scrapbooks of memory, Staal Gardens is history. Henry Staal dismantled the rink nearly two years ago, and now only the detritus of dreams -- a dozen or so muck-caked pucks and fragments of wooden boards in the matted grass -- serve as testament to a playground that measured 50 by 100 feet but imposed no parameters on the imagination. When they gazed out of their kitchen window, Henry and Linda Staal could see their four sons on the rink, impervious to the lung-searing Ontario winter, but now the mystical spot is hidden by a row of spruces that has grown through the years.

So, of course, have the boys.

In the long line of backyard rinks that have contributed to Canadian puck mythology -- Walter Gretzky, of course, flooded one for Wayne -- the Staals' miniature marvel with forest-green boards and a string of lights that Henry built for Eric, Marc, Jordan and Jared was carved into perhaps the most unusual setting. The Sunshine Sod Farm, 500 acres a few miles south of Thunder Bay, has provided the family with its livelihood. It may also prove the seeding ground of an NHL dynasty.

for the Sunshine Sod Farm boys, the grass has never been greener. Has any hockey family had a better year?

• Eric, a 6'4" center who turns 22 on Sunday, scored 100 points during the regular season and an NHL-leading 28 more in the playoffs as the Carolina Hurricanes won the 2006 Stanley Cup -- making him big-time as well as big. Eric, whose size and on-ice presence is such that he seems to loom over a game, had eight points in Carolina's first nine games this season.

• Marc, 19, a rangy defenseman, was the top defenseman in the World Junior Hockey championship last January, blanketing snipers such as Evgeni Malkin (now with Pittsburgh) and Phil Kessel (Boston). Although the Rangers returned him to the Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League after the preseason last month -- with players becoming unrestricted free agents earlier under the new CBA, most teams reflexively send junior-eligible prospects back for seasoning -- New York coach Tom Renney praised him as "a poised, confident player with a long fuse, a guy who can rattle some cages, sure, but who gauges situations."

• Jordan, 18, a slick center, got drafted second overall by the Penguins in June, fresh off helping the Peterborough Petes to a Memorial Cup berth. He won a roster spot in the preseason, sneaking on as the fourth-line center to become the NHL's youngest player, and scored his first goal on Oct. 12 on a shorthanded rush after breaking up a Jaromir Jagr pass against the Rangers. It was no surprise that Jordan swiped the puck and made a nifty deke, but it has been surprising that the rookie, who also had two goals in a win last Saturday, has been entrusted with penalty killing, a job usually reserved for savvy veteran forwards. "He's been put in important situations for a younger guy, and he's handled them great," says teammate Sidney Crosby. "His learning curve is fast."

• Jared, 16, has joined Marc in Sudbury after being the 11th player chosen in the OHL draft. Although he has yet to score a goal while competing against mostly 18- and 19-year-olds, he has played creditably in seven minutes a game on Sudbury's fourth line. The lofty draft position was a mild reach for a right winger who, despite a strong stride and good puckhandling skills, is not a prodigy, but Staal is no longer just a family name. Like Sutter, it is a trusted hockey brand.

Comparisons of the Staals to the NHL's famous Sutter brothers are natural though, for the moment, speculative. You can't take a combined 81 NHL seasons spanning a quarter century for the six hockey-playing Sutters -- Brian, Darryl, Duane, Brent and the twins, Rich and Ron -- and juxtapose it with two-plus for the Staal family. Still ... large families. Farming backgrounds. (The Sutters grew up on a cattle ranch in Viking, Alberta.) Solid people. Solid skills, although the Staal brothers, long and lean, have more flair. The Staals have already tied the Sutters in 100-point NHL seasons: one.

"I played against pretty much all the Sutters, and they were character guys," says Wolves coach Mike Foligno. "Same with the Staals.... You have to credit the values of bringing up a family the old way. I think the comparisons are appropriate."

"It's so early," Henry said in August of the Sutter comparisons as his Ford pickup rattled over fields of Kentucky bluegrass on his sod farm. "If all four become established NHL players, and I'm sitting home with four games on (the satellite) one night, then maybe I'll think, Wow. But for now the emotions for us are the same as they were when Eric was 13, Marc 11, Jordan 10 and Jared 8. You're happy when they do well, disappointed for them when their team loses or they have a bad game. It's exactly the same, except now they're making a living at it."

Certainly hockey pays better than farming, at least when their father was doling out the cash. Henry taught each of his sons how to drive a tractor, at two miles per hour, and to roll sod when they were six or seven. Pay began at $5 an hour and rose by a dollar each year. Eventually the boys would train for two hours in the morning, then put in a day of carrying or laying sod. Now they're generally excused from farmwork, but Jared and Jordan, Mr. High-First-Rounder, helped out this summer. "These kids identify with the family's common good," Renney says, "which bodes well for the NHL teams that have them."

Beyond learning a family business started by Henry's father, John, the life lesson of hard work coupled with tangible reward was instilled early. "Not that sod farming's bad," Jordan said. "But playing hockey, something you love, is a lot better than working in [100°] weather every day in the summer."

Henry and Linda didn't raise fools. Just unassuming sons. They tore up the basement by shooting pucks off the insulation, but there was no over-the-top rambunctiousness. The last time anyone can remember a full-scale outbreak of sibling rivalry was 10 years ago when Jordan scored a goal and Marc took exception by slugging him. Each seems as delighted by his brothers' accomplishments as by his own.

Eric and Jordan had a face-off against each other on Oct. 14, when they met professionally for the first time, a draw in the Pittsburgh zone. As they hunched over before the puck was dropped, the linesman said, "We're going to slow this down so somebody can take pictures." Eric then challenged his brother, "This is for a Gatorade." Eric won the draw, and when the brothers met in a corridor of Mellon Arena after the 5-1 Carolina win -- Eric scored 2:24 into the match -- Jordan forked over a sports drink. The Staals are not big on what they call "newspaper quotes" or, for that matter, "quotes" of any kind. When Eric, who'd had a playoff point streak of 15 games last spring but had gone seven games without a goal, was interrogated about his slump after Game 3 of the final against the Edmonton Oilers, he ladled out platitudes in a monotone. He let two goals and three assists in Games 4 and 5 answer more eloquently.

When the brothers find themselves in uncomfortable situations, they grow so quiet you might guess they were raised by the deer that amble through Sunshine Sod Farm. Their humility seems as matter-of-fact as their stickhandling. "We taught them that they weren't better than anyone else," Linda said. "Just that everyone has different gifts, and their gift maybe is hockey."

A sign at the Thunder Bay airport congratulates Eric on winning the Stanley Cup. This is, indisputably, cool. Maybe not as cool as the homage to Thunder Bay's most famous son, Paul Shaffer (David Letterman's bandleader has a street named for him), but a worthy tribute in a town that ditched Canada to pull for Carolina in the finals.

Thunder Bay is not a city as much as a fiefdom of 120,000 at the head of Lake Superior, connected to the wider world in almost random ways. If you make a left out of Sunshine Sod Farm, then a quick right up an unpaved road to Highway 61, you have a few options. You can drive west eight hours to Winnipeg, east seven hours to Sault Ste. Marie, south 31Ú2 hours across the border to Duluth or six to Minneapolis. In other words, you do not leave Thunder Bay on a whim. This is a self-contained world with a university, a brawny port, a famous land formation known as the Sleeping Giant, road signs that warn about moose at night, and hockey, a game -- an ethos -- that connects the disparate dots at the 48th Parallel.

 

"It's amazing how many people play here," said Henry, a forward with a big heart and mediocre hands at local Lakehead University in the late '70s and early '80s. "Even guys my age still play scrub hockey."

"Here you all grow up with the same dream, playing in a Game 7 and winning the Stanley Cup," Eric said. "And I did it."

Staal's breakout season delighted Thunder Bay, but the arrival of the Cup on Aug. 10 captivated it. There is something about that hardware that turns everyone into a kid on a backyard rink, including the 5,000 who showed up for a celebration downtown. Eric had won the Cup before, of course, at Staal Gardens, but the enormity of capturing it beyond the confines of the farm did not fully register until a few nights after Game 7, at the NHL awards ceremony in Vancouver, when the Stanley Cup was set up in a VIP lounge. "Other [players] were taking pictures of it but not touching it, of course," Eric said. "But I was right in there, grabbing it, like I won this. I can do this." The Cup didn't change Eric -- "He's still just my brother," Jared said -- but it has set the standard for the younger Staals, who are less envious than proud.

For the next two decades or more, barring misfortune, a Staal brother will be grappling for it. The reign could last until 2030 if Jared continues to improve. As he kicked at some old pucks on the remains of Staal Gardens, Henry mentioned how well his youngest son had played at an under-17 camp in the late spring. "What I saw then was a fear of failure," Henry said. "I don't think he wants to be known as the guy who didn't get out of Thunder Bay."

-- Michael Farber

 

Now that we have your opinion we can sleep better. :fu4:

 

I am sure Yinzer had something insightful to add to the discussion, but since his dumb ass is being ignored in my system, I won't know until someone quotes him.

 

Here you go Solarte. Now you can sleep better too.

 

thanks. preesh.

 

There's a great article about the Staal brothers in the latest Sports Illustrated (Chad Johnson Cover). Talks about how their dad built them a rink on their sod farm in Thunder Bay, Ontario. What a great investment, eh?