The Carolina Hurricanes are losing Jordan Staal for a long stretch. Rod Brind'Amour said Tuesday morning the veteran has a tear in his calf.
The timeline is ugly. Brind'Amour put the outer edge at a couple of months, which means significant time out of the lineup for the Conn Smythe Trophy winner.
Until today, he'd been listed day-to-day with a lower-body issue. Nobody around this team is using that phrase anymore.
The timing is strange, because Carolina has rarely looked better. The Hurricanes sit first overall at 5-1-1 and carry a five-game winning streak into tonight.
And tonight brings a familiar problem at puck drop. The Capitals beat the Hurricanes 5-2 on home ice back on October 2, the lone regulation loss on Carolina's record.
The 38-year-old wasn't producing yet. He went scoreless through six games with a -2 rating, so the box score won't tell you much about what just walked out of the room.
Losing a guy like that is like losing the neighbor who shovels every driveway on the street before sunrise. Nobody thanks him until the snow starts piling up.
Hurricanes now face a five-game road trip without Jordan Staal
After the Capitals, Carolina gets three days without a game. Then it's Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton and St. Louis, back to back to back.
The good news? The road hasn't rattled this group. The Hurricanes are 4-0-0 away from home, while the home record sits at a far less convincing 1-1-1.
The top of the lineup is doing the heavy lifting anyway. Sebastian Aho has piled up 10 points over his last five games alone.
Andrei Svechnikov has eight points of his own. Four of them came on the power play, and that unit isn't missing a beat.
So who absorbs the hard minutes now? Mark Jankowski has four goals on a $1,850,000 cap hit, which is a nice problem for a depth forward to have.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi is the name worth watching. He's dressed for just five games, with two assists to show for it.
That kind of output on a $4,820,000 cap hit won't buy much patience when a door opens this wide. Brind'Amour will notice who walks through it.
Eric Tulsky shouldn't go shopping for a stopgap. A first-place team with a +10 goal differential has no business paying a trade price over October ice time.
The real pressure lands on the bench, not the front office. Brind'Amour has to rebuild his matchups on the fly, on the road, against five straight opponents.
And if that couple of months stretches toward the outer edge, Staal will come back to a team that's learned to win without him. Whether that's good news is another question entirely.
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Should Eric Tulsky trade for a veteran forward to cover Jordan Staal's absence?
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