Eberle Back In-Tune One Year After Serious Injury

There were “stir crazy” days this time a year ago when all Kraken captain Jordan Eberle had was a guitar and his kids to sing to in his basement.

That’s when Eberle, bedridden nearly three months in his Eastside home following a serious pelvic injury and surgery, turned to music for peace of mind. He’d sing “campfire songs” where two of his children chimed along while his then-newborn daughter merely stared and sometimes cried during his vocal renditions as Eberle tried to feel useful.

“You just try to keep your mind off of things as much as you can,” said Eberle, now exactly 12 months removed from his surgery and again the top goal scorer for a Kraken team challenging for the Pacific Division lead.

Eberle also started off in stellar fashion a year ago before damaging his pelvis on Nov. 14, 2024, after crashing awkwardly into the end boards during a game against Chicago. He didn’t play again for 100 days. And though he returned for the season’s final seven weeks, he wondered whether, having turned 35 last May, he’d wasted the last big scoring spurt of a 300-plus goal career.

But those concerns have eased with Eberle now leading the team with eight goals after scoring Tuesday night in Detroit and sitting tied with teammate Jaden Schwartz at a Kraken best 14 points. Eberle is the third oldest player to lead his team in goals this season, with only Sidney Crosby, 38, of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Brad Marchand, 37, of the Florida Panthers topping him in age. He’s also the third oldest leading or tied for his team’s top points total next to Evgeni Malkin, 39, of the Penguins and Marchand.

His current pace has even surpassed his six-goal, five-assist start from last season, which coincided with his being named captain for the first time in his 15-year career. More importantly, he’s been a key part of the Kraken surviving an early-season gauntlet of contending teams to where they now are, pushing the NHL’s finest with a 9-5-5 record and 23 points.

“I think the hardest thing for me before was not being around the team,” Eberle said. “I mean, I’d been hurt before, but you’re at the rink and you’re with the group and stuff. So, I tried to feel better every day. Once I got back on the ice and felt comfortable, I started feeling more confident that I’d get back to where I needed to be.”

Up to that on-ice return, he’d leaned heavily on his love of music for its calming influence. Eberle had a hospital bed moved into the ground-floor basement of his home near its entryway because he couldn’t yet climb the two flights of stairs to his bedroom.

He and his wife, Lauren, had seen their third child born the day after Eberle’s return home from surgery. So, she was left largely to care for everybody and run the household, something that left Eberle feeling somewhat useless and desperate to do something. His father, Darren, had been a guitarist who’d played in 1980s-style bands and then took it up again in Calgary after the family moved there from Eberle’s native Regina, Saskatchewan, when he was 15.

But though his dad first introduced him to the guitar, Eberle didn’t really start playing until Lauren, who’d been with him since their teens, gifted him one for his 21st birthday after he’d just started his career with his childhood favorite Edmonton Oilers team. They were back in Calgary together for the summer when Eberle tried learning to play it.

“It rained for three weeks straight, and I couldn’t play golf, so I was like, ‘Screw this, I’m going to learn how to play this thing,’” Eberle said.

He kept practicing in the team’s ensuing training camp while living with Oilers teammates Taylor Hall and Ryan Whitney at the time.

“I’m sure they were sick of me just tinkering around on it.”

Later, while playing for the New York Islanders, he attended Broadway musicals and tinkered with the guitar even more alongside teammates Anders Lee, Johnny Boychuk, Kyle Clutterbuck, and onetime Seattle Thunderbirds captain Mat Barzal.

“We’d hang out and play together and actually wrote a few songs together as well,” Eberle said. “That was fun just having guys to jam with and play while out on the road and in the rooms. Especially during COVID, we weren’t allowed to leave the hotel.”

Right before those 2020 playoffs, Eberle, Lee and Barzal even wrote a song about the team that became their unofficial anthem.

We’re the boys of the Isles

We don’t play a pretty style

And it ain’t that much fun

But it gets the job done

Upon joining the Kraken, Eberle lived downtown and often frequented the Museum of Popular Culture. He and his wife dressed as Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love for the team’s first Halloween party and he’s long been a fan of local bands Nirvana, Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam, an appreciation instilled in him at a young age by his father.

Eberle has also golfed locally with Pat Monahan, lead singer of Train. During the team’s One Roof Foundation gala two seasons ago, Eberle led a group of Kraken players up onstage to sing along with Monahan at the private Climate Pledge Arena event.

He’ll try to play his guitar most days even if only for 20 minutes to an hour.

“It just kind of takes your mind away a little bit,” he said.

So, when he needed a stress release from staring at his basement walls last winter, Eberle turned to his guitar. Though several models, some signed, now adorn his walls – including a ukelele autographed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam given Eberle for his 1,000th NHL game in March 2024 -- his favorite go-to remains a handmade Martin Guitar he played as soon as he could sit up straight again.

“That was one of the things I could do, especially once I was able to get in a wheelchair,” he said. “I still couldn’t put any weight on my legs, but I was in a wheelchair and would take the handle off so I could play. That was nice. It could keep my mind occupied a little bit.”

His daughter, Collins, and son, Deacon, then ages 4 and 2, came downstairs to join him in sing-alongs. Collins has a small ukulele given to her as a Christmas gift and typically plays it alongside her dad. Before long, the newest daughter, Landyn, was carried down to visit as well and listen to his playing.

“Looking back, it all seems kind of crazy,” Eberle’s wife said of their post-surgery situation. “Now, it all seems surreal. But when you’re in it, you just kind of do it.”

Lauren Rodych-Eberle said her husband’s musical repertoire never includes Nickelback songs despite his known affinity for that group. Instead, he’ll do Backstreet Boys – “I Want It That Way” was the first song he learned to play – popular country music or sentimental favorites like their wedding song – “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur. He’ll also take requests from their children.

“Right now, our son is obsessed with ‘Tipsy’ by Shaboozey,” she said. “But then they’ll also be doing the standard ‘Wheels on the Bus’ or something like that.”

Rodych-Eberle grew up loving music and now teaches singing, piano, ukulele, and preschool musical classes. When asked to critique her husband’s vocal chops, she chuckled: “I always tell him, ‘It sounds great!’”

On a more serious note, she added that Eberle does want singing lessons at some point.

“We’ve discussed whether that will be with me or somebody else, but he’s improved over time just by doing it so much,” she said. “I wish he’d show it off more because he’s shy about singing in front of anyone. He often won’t even play his guitar in front of anyone. But he’s really good.”

He’s good at hockey as well, and that was never far from his mind. Rodych-Eberle was glad her husband had music during a time they both struggled raising their bigger family with its newest member, and him sidelined.

“That was a huge thing he wound up doing down in the basement,” she said. “It was another way he could connect with the kids or just with the two of us. We could all be in the room with him.

“I think the natural joy he felt from that probably helped him as well.”

Still, she knew Eberle needed to move beyond. He’d signed a new two-year extension with the Kraken the prior summer, hoping for another shot at the playoffs, having fallen a game short of the Stanley Cup Final with the Islanders in 2021 and a game away from the Western Conference Final with the Kraken in 2023.

So, she was thrilled to see him start scoring so quickly again this season. And playing a key role in the Kraken winning at a rate unseen since that prior playoff year.

“His energy going in wasn’t just that he wanted to be back playing,” she said. “He wanted to be back playing well and being helpful to the team and the team doing well. So, I’m so glad it’s started off this way.”

Eberle was hurt in last season’s 17th game. He played his 18th game of this season last Saturday night in a victory over San Jose. In doing so, he and his wife both breathed a sigh of relief at him physically surpassing that ominous milestone. From this point on, it’s all about looking ahead instead of backward.

The summer had given Eberle needed time to focus on additional strength training and conditioning beyond merely rehabbing his injury. Nobody had given Eberle a specific post-surgical timeframe for recovery simply because no hockey player had ever undergone his rare type of pelvic surgery.

“I mean, you go from lying in bed and learning how to walk again to learning how to skate again,” Eberle said. “Making it back, I didn’t feel amazing. I think I was a little behind.”

But returning last season was important, he added, so he could prove to himself that – even at his age – he could still play in the NHL. From there, it was a matter of regaining the strength he’d lost sitting in the basement plucking guitar strings.

“I think it was by July that I said, ‘OK, now I feel like I’m back to where I was before the injury.’”

He and Lauren also returned last summer to their home in Calgary, Alberta, where they threw two fundraisers for their Sticks & Strings Foundation. It focuses on children-based charities in areas of sports, music, reading, the outdoors, and supporting new parents or parents in need.

The foundation allows both to give back to their community through their passion for music. One of Eberle’s guest performers at foundation events has been his good friend, Canadian country music artist Brett Kissel, who once appeared on a hunting show with him and has played guitar up on stage with the Kraken captain as well.

For now, those events are the closest Eberle will come to playing an instrument in public. He’s determined to keep any performances on the ice for now, feeling he still has plenty to give and is proving it on the scoreboard.

“Obviously, I’m 35 but some of the players I look up to in the league, like (Sidney) Crosby, or Joe Pavelski, those are guys that consistently played, and age was just a number. We take such good care of ourselves now with training and treatment and if you do that you can play in this league.

“Father Time will get you at some point,” he added. “But I’ve played enough and the IQ and my brain is something I’ve always leaned on for how I played the game. And as that grows, I’ll just try to keep up with that as long as I can.”

Something his basement concert fans will gladly sing along to for now.