God in the Hurricanes’ locker room

Jordan Staal not only won his second Stanley Cup in June, but he is also, at age 37, the oldest hockey player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, which recognizes him as the most valuable player (MVP) of his team, the Carolina Hurricanes, in the playoffs. In a phone call in mid-July, Staal and I discussed his physical and spiritual journey over 30-some years of hockey, from his family’s outdoor rink to the NHL.

A consummate player, Jordan is known around the league as a mature Christian team leader. I asked if he considered hockey a calling from God. “It’s the passion I grew up with, just loving the game, taking one little step at a time,” Staal replied. “But the NHL wasn’t always my dream as a kid. It never solidified until it happened. It was more, ‘What’s my next play? What can I do today to make my game better?’ It was always on my mind, never really my calling, but always what I wanted to do.”

Jason Grootenboer, Staal’s Thunder Bay Christian School teacher, recalled asking some 10-year-old boys, including Jordan, what they wanted to do after finishing school. Several said, “I want to play in the NHL.” To which a young Jordan commented, “Well, that’s highly unlikely to happen.”

But happen it did, with a growing sense of possibility that Jordan hadn’t anticipated until his first Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009. “It was amazing to lift the cup. A couple of days later, I woke up thinking, ‘That’s everything I wanted as a kid.’ But I felt empty; something was still missing. That’s when I finally figured, ‘That hole’s gotta be filled by God.’ Maybe it was God’s way of saying he’d been with me all the time, but I hadn’t realized it. Only God’s gonna fill my life and future.” His parents’ stated hope to raise Christian sons was bearing fruit.

Jordan’s two families

Family life has always defined the Staals, as Henry and Linda, Jordan’s parents, described in an interview with CC (“Built on faith and hockey”). When Staal described the Hurricanes, it seemed as if the Hurricanes were nearly an extension of his biological family. That sense of family took years to sprout, but the seed was planted after the Penguins traded Jordan to Carolina in 2012. Eric, the oldest Staal brother, had already captained the Hurricanes for two years. Eric and Jordan played together for the Hurricanes for almost four years. With Eric’s 2016 trade to the Rangers, Jordan graduated to co-captain, and later, in 2019, to captain. To add to the serendipity, the Hurricanes called up their youngest brother, Jared, from AHL’s Charlotte Checkers; the three brothers started together on April 25, 2013.

Not surprisingly, Jordan speaks affectionately of the current Hurricanes team as family. After their 2006 Stanley Cup win, the Hurricanes missed the playoffs from 2009 till 2018. Since then, they’ve been in the playoffs every year, a remarkable turnaround culminating this year in a Stanley Cup victory.

Highs and lows

Knowing that professional hockey is extremely demanding, I probed, “How do you keep your faith growing in such pressure?” Staal’s fulsome response: “Since I came to Raleigh, we’ve had a team chapel that meets every two weeks or whenever we can get together. Sid Graham, our chaplain in Carolina, has been an unbelievable leader for the fellows in the locker room. I invite him and ask everyone to come if they want. This year [Jaccob] Slavin, [Logan] Stankoven, [Jackson] Blake, and Chatty [Jalen Chatfield] were the most consistent guys. Chatty recently accepted Christ and was baptized. Jaccob was a big reason for that.”

After a brief pause, Jordan added, “We’ve been doing couples Bible study with our neighbours in the last year.” Clearly Jordan has woven spiritual values and commitment into his career, but his faith finds a home in the community, too.

“How does your pretty public testimony sit with teammates?” I asked. A thoughtful moment; then, “I make mistakes, but I’d like to think that they see something different in our leadership group. Love in the room is a big part of it. God’s a big part of it. Bringing guys together, we become a family, treating everyone as you’d want to be treated. Roddy Brind’amour, Slavin, myself and the rest of the core guys try to build that family atmosphere. It’s really bonding us together. God got us over the hump this year, for sure.”

“The years we were really struggling were really hard. When I’ve suffered injuries, I’m looking up to God – like ‘What’s going on? Aren’t you here?’ But overall, I’d say God’s been so consistent and faithful with me. I look back to my career and realize God’s always been alongside me, without me recognizing it.”

Winning humbly

This year’s win was a long, agonizing time in coming, with Jordan a key player in the years of raising the team family. I asked him to describe that process. He emphatically responded, “You gotta have leadership and loyalty. Most of all, though, you have to be eager to be part of a family, to do life together game after game, year by year. Seven years, gradually building good teams. But just coming up short. You never quite figure it out. We knew we had good teams through those years – but the frustrations, the step-by-step development. Then finally pulling it off in mid-June – it’s all so cool.”

As this was Jordan’s second time lifting the Cup, I asked how it compared with the first. “When I looked at the cup then, it was childhood dreams come true – with all the minor hockey coaches, parents, my brothers. We were all part of that Penguins dream and team.”

But this time: “It was my teammates, years of trying to figure this thing out and battling together, everything I saw them go through. Both Cup wins were very cool, just different.”

We were both talked out and I was ready to hang up. I asked Jordan if he had anything else to add. He thought for a moment and then said with unintentional humility, “I really don’t get what the big deal is about. I’m just a sod farmer from Thunder Bay.”