On November 6, 2025, Jordan Staal stepped onto the ice at Lenovo Center against Minnesota and became the Carolina Hurricanes' all-time leader in games played.

Game 910. More than anyone has played in this sweater since the franchise came south in 1997.

Then he got in a fight in the first period and missed most of the rest of the night.

The record itself

Two things about it.

First, this is the record since relocation. Ron Francis is still ahead of him in franchise history at 1,186 games, and Glen Wesley at 913 — both of them counting Hartford. Staal passed Wesley about a week later and moved into second overall.

Second, and this is the part that gets me: the guy he passed for the relocation record was his own brother.

Eric Staal played 909 games as a Hurricane. Captain for six of those years, the face of the 2006 Cup team as a 21-year-old, the guy who was supposed to be the franchise's answer for a decade. He got traded to the Rangers in 2016 and went on to Minnesota and Buffalo and Florida and never won another one.

Jordan passed him by one game.

How he got here

He wasn't drafted here. Pittsburgh took him second overall in 2006, one year after Crosby went first, and he scored 29 goals as an 18-year-old rookie and made the All-Rookie team. He won a Cup at 20.

Then Pittsburgh had Crosby, Malkin, and Staal, and no way to pay all three like top-six centers. So in June 2012 they traded him to Carolina.

On his wedding day.

I've thought about that a lot. You're 23 years old, getting married, and your employer of six years calls to tell you you've been sent to a franchise coming off three straight seasons out of the playoffs.

He got four years with his brother out of it. Then Eric left and he stayed.

What the fight was about

I think he was defensing a hard hit on Chatty. That's what makes it perfect.

First period of his own milestone game, he goes after Tyler Pitlick. It was his first fight since February 2017 — eight and a half years. He's 37 years old. He sat in the box while the record was still warm and then missed a big chunk of the game.

Carolina won 4-3.

Afterward he thanked his teammates for battling and called it a good memory. Brind'Amour said the thing he always says about Staal, which is that he comes to the rink every day and puts the team first, and that it's getting harder to find guys who do that.

Jarvis put it better. He said what's admirable is that Staal has played at the same level for that long — scoring, defense, faceoffs, all of it.

The number nobody mentions

He's in his 20th NHL season. He's one of five active players who have scored a goal in twenty different seasons.

The other four are Crosby, Ovechkin, Burns, and Corey Perry.

That's a list of three future Hall of Famers and a guy who's played 1,500 games. Staal is on it because he's been useful for two full decades in a job where usefulness has a short shelf life.

Why the record fits him specifically

Games played is a stat people roll their eyes at. It's not a skill. It measures durability and employment, and mostly it means you were good enough to keep dressing and healthy enough to show up.

Which is exactly right for this guy.

He's never had a 60-point season here. He finished fifth in Selke voting roughly every year without winning it. He was 20 percent below expected as a finisher over a decade, which somebody made a graphic about two weeks before the playoffs started.

And he played 910 games, took the hard faceoffs, killed the penalties, drew the other team's best line, and captained the franchise through the entire drought — 2019, 2023, 2025, three conference finals that all ended the same way.

Seven months after he broke the record, he scored in five straight Cup Final games and won the Conn Smythe at 37 years and 277 days, the oldest player ever to win it.

The Cool Part

Pittsburgh drafted him second overall and gave him up because the math didn't work. That's not a criticism of them — it was the right call for a team with Crosby and Malkin, and they'd already won a Cup with him.

But the franchise record for games played in Carolina belongs to a guy another team decided they couldn't afford.

Fourteen years, one Conn Smythe, and a fight in the first period of his own milestone game.

That's about as Jordan Staal as it gets.