Jordan Staal Searches for Normalcy

What is normal?
It's a question Jordan Staal has been wrestling with for weeks.
"Normal is nice," he said with a smile, after joining the Carolina Hurricanes in practice for the first time in almost eight weeks. "It's nice just to feel normal."

Normalcy proved elusive Staal through much of December and January. The Canes' centerman missed five games in mid-December with a diagnosed concussion. He returned for a game and half of another before the abnormal crept back in.
"Stuff wasn't right. It's a weird injury. It's something that you wish on no one," Staal said. "You don't really understand it until you go through it, for the most part. It's unfortunate that I had to go through it, but I learned a lot. I learned a lot about the injury and other things about my body."
He learned through the good days and the bad. He learned by reading what his body was trying to tell him. He learned by talking his experiences through with doctors, experts and others who have been there before, like both of his brothers, Eric and Marc.
"Until you go through it, you don't realize what's right, what's wrong, what's up, what's down," he said. "I talked to [Marc] a lot, and he helped me through a lot of tough days."

Unlike the broken bone in his right leg that sidelined Staal for the first half of the 2014-15 season, a concussion and its varying after-effects aren't accompanied by a set recovery process or a definitive time-table.
Staal knew that. He had been there before. At least, he thought he knew. Not one concussion is the same, and coping with this one proved much different than when he first suffered one in Nov. 2016.
"In the end, it's obviously about feeling good and feeling back to yourself. I feel like I've hit that point," he said. "In the last two weeks, I've been feeling a lot better, having energy throughout the day and building off that. As of late, I've been able to push with no setbacks."
Staal continues to push, and on Thursday, he took the next big step into returning to game action when he skated with the Canes in practice while wearing a yellow, no-contact sweater.
"Seeing him out there for the first time in a long time was great," head coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "We've missed him, but we've managed to hang around. Hopefully we get him back soon because we need him."
Staal's absence certainly left a big hole - both literally and figuratively - in the Canes' lineup. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound centerman has averaged close to 20 minutes of ice time this season and is a key component of the team's penalty kill.
Where his absence has been most noticeable is in the faceoff circle. The Canes ranked sixth in the league with a 51.9 percent faceoff win percentage in December. In the time Staal has missed since, the Canes have sunk to 44.3 percent, which ranks 29th in the league.
But - and this is a big but - in the 23 games Staal has missed since not feeling right again on Dec. 22, the Canes have posted a 15-7-1 record, second-best in the league in that time.
"It's been awesome to see. The guys have battled so hard to push to get back into it. It's been fun watching. We've been playing great," Staal said. "Even the games we don't win, we've been playing really solid. It's exactly the way we want to play, and hopefully I can make a small contribution to it soon."
When the Canes supplement their lineup with Staal hopefully sooner rather than later, it will be akin to adding a player at the trade deadline, all without having to lose another to complete the deal.
"That's one way to look at it, for sure, because he's been out for so long," Brind'Amour said. "We still don't know when he's going to get back in there, but just being out there is a step in the right direction."
And a step in the right direction, a step further toward normalcy, is nice for a change.
"Every day is a new battle. You wake up, and you're not really sure what's going to happen. That can weigh on you a little bit," Staal said. "It took a toll on me for a while, but in the end, you have to believe you're going to get better at some point, and I did."