Staal-ing the Show

A little brotherly competition never hurt anybody. By Bryan Rubin

(Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press)

Last Saturday night, the Carolina Hurricanes took the ice against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The storyline of the game featured the matchup between brothers Eric and Jordan Staal. Eric Staal, forward for the Hurricanes, ended up getting the last laugh in Carolina’s 5-3 win.

Coming into the night, both teams were playing the second of back-to-backs. The Penguins cruised to a 3-1 victory at home verses Dallas the night before while the Hurricanes was blown out on the road in New York.

Carolina got on the board early on a back-hand goal by sophomore sensation Jeff Skinner just a minute and a half into the game. For the rest of the first twenty minutes, the Canes were continuously bailed out by goalie Cam Ward, who saved all ten first period shots.

In the last five minutes of the second period, Hurricanes forward Tuomo Ruttu found the net twice off assists from Skinner. At the end of the second frame, the Hurricanes held a commanding 3-0 lead.

The third period rolled around, and still neither Staal was on the scoresheet. But at 1:40 of the last period, Evgeni Malkin found Jordan Staal in the slot, who slid a wrister past Ward to put the Penguins on the board. Less than four minutes later, Staal scored again on a short-handed breakaway. It couldn’t have gotten much worse for Eric. He was on the ice for both of Jordan’s goals and had to watch his team’s lead diminish as his younger brother celebrated on his ice.

And when Chris Kunitz tied the game up at 12:18, the Hurricanes looked like the struggling thirteenth place team in the East, losers of four in a row. Not the team that was flying around against the conference leading Penguins for the first forty minutes of the game.

In a game recap on NHL.com, Staal was quoted saying, “you're in that position, up 3-0, and all of a sudden it's 3-3. You can either shell up and call it a night or rear up and go after the next goal.”

And that’s exactly what he did. Camping out next to the net, Staal buried home Chad Larose’s rebound to score the game-winning goal, showing his little bro how it’s done.