Penguins' Staal married and divorced, all in one day

By Gene Collier
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
June 23, 2012

Jordan Staal will be skating with brother Eric in Carolina this fall.

You may now kiss the groom ... goodbye.

All right, maybe it didn't go down quite like that Friday for Jordan Staal of the Thunder Bay Staals on the occasion of the young man's nuptials.

Maybe it was closer to:

I now pronounce you Hurricane and wife.

Whatever the time line particulars, at a couple of minutes after 8 p.m. Friday, the splendid center who wore No. 11 on some of the most talented hockey teams to skate in Pittsburgh officially and almost certainly became the first Penguin ever to be married and divorced on the same day.

Faced with a glut of talent at center that was threatening to become affixed to a glut of monstrous cap-hostile contracts, Penguins general manager Ray Shero did what most everyone realized he had to do sooner or later.

He sent Staal to Carolina for center Brandon Sutter, defenseman Brian Dumoulin, and a much higher perch in the first round of the NHL draft that had begun just an hour before right down the hall from his office.

Within minutes of that swap, the Penguins used the eighth pick on Derrick Pouliot, who was roundly described as an offensive defenseman, probably as much because no one ever gets described as a defensive offenseman as anything else.

In either case, Pouliot now begins his flightless waterfowl odyssey, which will take him either to the storied pond of the Consol Energy Center at some length or forever into the annals of Penguins trivia.

But Pouliot's name could be forgotten, remembered and forgotten again 15 times before anyone around here forgets Staal, who launched his career with a burst of Mellon Arena offense at age 18 and blossomed across six winters into as reliable a two-way force as exists in the modern NHL.

His departure divorces the Penguins from one of the most talented penalty-killers in their history and simultaneously triggers nothing short of the necessary remaking of the club's on-ice persona.

Long a center-centric amalgamation of world-class offensive talent with Staal, newly branded NHL Most Valuable Player Evgeni Malkin, and the incomparable if recently fragile Sidney Crosby, the Penguins must now adopt a different profile, which is not at all a bad thing.

For all of their offensive resourcefulness, you might have noticed, they exited this playoff spring at the earliest convenience of the Philadelphia Flyers.

In just six games, the Penguins allowed the young Philadelphians 30 goals.


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