The New York Rangers, like 30 other NHL teams, would love to have their own Jordan Staal.
Unfortunately, there’s only one such player, and he belongs to the Carolina Hurricanes, the huge power center who can dominate games and even playoff series through his unmatched defensive prowess and 200-foot game, capable of shutting down his counterparts with size, strength and faceoff proficiency.
About to enter his 19th season, the 6-foot-4, 220-pound Staal signed a four-year, $11.6 million extension in June 2023 with the Hurricanes, who can’t imagine life without the 35-year-old. Staal has become one of the most coveted players in the league, though probably not for the reasons he thought he would when the Pittsburgh Penguins made him the second overall pick in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft.
The Penguins believed Staal would blossom into a high-scoring No. 1 center. While he has delivered offense throughout his career, recording 675 points, it’s the Carolina captain’s two-way play that has helped give the Hurricanes their identity as they’ve posted three consecutive 110-plus point seasons.
Players like Staal don’t grow on trees, and they’re almost never available as free agents, as evidenced by the Hurricanes eagerly extending him in a deal that undoubtedly represented a hometown discount from what he would have received on the open market. Having acquired him in what turned out to be a lopsided trade in June 2012 from the Penguins, Carolina has never had any interest in letting Staal get away.
While there’s only one Staal, there’s no reason a team shouldn’t try to develop a reasonable facsimile if it has the opportunity. Maybe, just maybe, the Rangers have the chance to do that in the coming years with a giant forward of their own.
Edstrom Impressed Laviolette in His First Rangers Go-Round
Adam Edstrom wasn’t a high draft pick like Staal – he was selected in the sixth round, 161st overall, in the 2019 draft, a flier taken by former general manager Jeff Gorton. Yet the 23-year-old’s rare combination of size – 6-7 and 234 pounds – and uncommon all-around skill and skating ability might represent the kind raw material that can be molded into something very valuable, just as Staal was.
The Rangers recalled Edstrom from Hartford of the American Hockey League twice last season – once in December for a memorable NHL debut, then again in February for a longer stretch – and quickly found out that he was more than just a huge guy teetering around on skates. Edstrom’s strength and taking up of space were hardly a surprise, but his long strides and ability to more than keep up with the play suggested he was something different.
“He’s a big guy that just skates so well,” coach Peter Laviolette said Feb. 12, after Edstrom’s first game of his second recall. “His stick is big, and even in practice you could just see him moving up and down the ice. He skates with ease.
“I like his physicality. I like his awareness. He was a player that played good defense (with the Wolf Pack). He killed penalties. Eventually, we’ll start to work him into different scenarios, but there wasn’t anything in the game that made me feel like he couldn’t play in the last five, six minutes of the game.”
Edstrom scored a goal in the dying seconds of his first contest, a 5-1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks on Dec. 15, and played 10 games after returning from the AHL in February, scoring another one during that stretch. He didn’t make the Rangers’ playoff roster like fellow giant Matt Rempe did, skating as a Black Ace instead.
Just as Rempe might have a future as a bottom-six forward with rare on-ice attributes, so could Edstrom, who can play all three forward positions but is listed as a natural center. The Blueshirts, so desperate for a Staal-like presence who can dominate the middle with physicality and size, would be wise to find out if Edstrom can be just that.
Chances are he probably won’t ever fully be Staal, who scored 29 goals and led the league with seven short-handed tallies as an 18-year-old rookie, marks that still stand as his career highs. Yet Staal has never been an offensive force, reaching the 50-point mark once in his career. Would Edstrom be able to develop his obvious offensive ability enough to become a 30-40 point player, while prioritizing growth as a defensive center who can overwhelm opposing pivots with his power and huge frame?
As Laviolette said, Edstrom killed penalties at Hartford, and the coach liked enough of what he saw to proclaim that the rookie was on his way to doing that and other things for the Rangers. It’s possible that Edstrom is just a well-rounded prospect who fell in the draft because teams were scared off by his size, unsure that he’d be able to move well enough to make an impact. Laviolette sounded eager to find out, though not in the playoffs, when the Blueshirts’ run at the Stanley Cup fell six wins short for the second time in three seasons.
One of the reasons for that was again a lack of brawn, something the Rangers are perpetually trying to solve. A 234-pound center who delivered 30 hits in 11 games would certainly prove to be a step in the right direction.
Like Staal did when he arrived in the NHL, Edstrom profiled as a scorer, having scored 11 goals with five assists in 40 games for Hartford last season. The Blueshirts’ best course of action for the native of Karlstad, Sweden, though, would be to find out if he can win the fourth-line center job at some point next season, be it in training camp or at a later date. That could very well be the first step toward Edstrom anchoring a shutdown third line in the future – just as Staal does for Carolina.
Rangers Shouldn’t Hesitate to Try Edstrom at His Natural Spot at Center
There isn’t much of a body of data on whether Edstrom can dominate the faceoff dot the way Staal does, but Staal’s career provides evidence that the skill can be learned and (nearly) perfected.
Staal won only 42.2 percent of his 1,202 draws in his second season in the league and never reached a 50 percent win rate in his first five seasons (though faceoff data for his rookie season isn’t available). However, he hit 51.0 percent in Season 6, and since then has been under 54.4 percent only once, approaching the 60 percent mark on several occasions. Learning to harness his strength and honing his technique over time, Staal has become one of the league’s most nightmarish matchups at the dot.
Can Edstrom can follow Staal’s lead, towering over essentially any other center and racking up wins on draws with brute force and repetition, especially in the defensive zone? Is the better comparison for Edstrom former Calgary Flames center Joel Otto, another huge and unheralded young player who built a career out of driving Mark Messier crazy for his 11 seasons with the Edmonton Oilers’ archrivals in the 1980s and 90s?
Like Staal and Otto, can Edstrom become the player that Laviolette or future Rangers coaches deploy as their matchup with elite opposing centers? There’s only one way to find out.
As with Rempe, the Rangers have in Edstrom what might be a unique opportunity to forge an atypically-built hockey player into one that can leverage his package of huge size and skill into NHL success. The fact that Edstrom might have the potential to grow into an element the Blueshirts have been missing for years should make the prospect of trying to make that happen all the more enticing.
The organization initiated that process by bringing Edstrom up for a taste of the NHL last season. His growing pains might prove to be more elongated than those of other youngsters, but failing to continue acting boldly with this unicorn of a talent represents a much bigger risk than giving Edstrom every opportunity to find out just how good he could be.
