Declaring your team's most important player is not a simple thing. It's not always the most valuable guy or the highest points producer. It is the player who makes your team go; the one you can't afford to lose, even if all he contributes can't be measured by fancy stats.
Most Important Player: Eric Staal, Center
What about Noah Hanifin the No. 5 pick in the draft this June? Or U.S. Olympian and defensive anchor Justin Faulk?
Fair questions.
But no one has meant more to this franchise over the past decade than its captain, but now we are reaching the moment of truth for the beleaguered Canes and for the No. 2 pick in 2003.
This is the final year of Staal’s contract. He will earn $9.5 million in real money and carry a cap hit of $8.25 million. It’s a big ticket for a man who is coming off seasons of 23 and 21 goals and whose team has not made the playoffs since 2009. Would general manager Ron Francis like to keep Staal in the fold? Of course. The 30-year-old is a pro’s pro. He’s big, he’s talented, he’s a center. He is a player who represents the kind of role model any team would be happy to have its young players learn from.
But what is Staal’s value long term to a Carolina Hurricanes team that is, to put it bluntly, simply not very good and not looking as if it’ll be very good for some time to come?
What Francis and Staal, who has a no-trade, no-movement clause, have to decide is whether Staal wants to be part of whatever is going to happen in Raleigh, North Carolina, over the next three or four seasons, which is realistically the time it’s going to take to get this team back into the thick of the playoff discussion. And if he does, what is the right dollar value and term for a team that isn’t anywhere close to being a salary-cap team?
If Staal and Francis can’t decide on dollars and term, they have to find a place for Staal where he has a shot at winning a second Stanley Cup -- he won his first in 2006 -- and determine what kind of assets Staal might bring back to the organization. Francis has the same issue with netminder Cam Ward, but Ward’s value, to the Canes and as a trading asset, is not nearly as significant.
Either way, stay or go, this represents a seminal season for the Hurricanes and their captain.
