RALEIGH, N.C. — “Boys, supper!”

It became the nightly routine in the Staal household.

The sun would set into a cold, dark Thunder Bay, Ontario, evening, and Linda Staal would call for her four boys — Eric, Marc, Jordan and Jared — to quit playing hockey on the outdoor rink husband Henry built and come inside their warm, toasty house.

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“Every night,” Linda Staal said.

The Staal Bros. would always disregard Mom’s repeated calls for grub, so she’d ultimately turn out the exterior lights.

“We’d eventually come in when she’d call for us … but never the first time,” Wild veteran Eric Staal said, smiling at the distant memory.

“That’s because we got the last laugh,” Rangers defenseman Marc Staal said.

During one hockey tournament down in the Twin Cities, the Staal children played with pucks that had red lights on each side.

The puck would flash anytime it was struck by a stick.

Of course, the Staals snagged a couple and brought the pucks home to Thunder Bay.

“So, when Mom turned out the lights, we’d just play with that puck because we could see it in the dark,” Eric said, laughing.

Even Henry would get a kick out of the boys’ antics when it came to ignoring mom’s calls for dinner.

“They used to get mad at me when the rink wasn’t ready,” Henry Staal, a second-generation sod farmer, said of his four boys. “They’d say, ‘Dad! How come the rink’s not ready yet?’ I’d go, ‘I’m working on it! Give it a couple more days.’ My winter focus was how to get that rink ready for every time they’d come off the school bus.”

All those hours amassed by the Staal boys honing their craft must have worked. Somehow, Henry and Linda Staal raised four boys who would all play professional hockey.

Saturday night, the latest Eric vs. Jordan battle will come when the Wild play the Hurricanes in Carolina’s home opener.

It will be Eric’s second return to Carolina as a member of the Wild.

Of Staal’s 1,012 regular-season games, 909 came with the Hurricanes, and 43 of his 53 playoff games. He won a Cup with the Canes in 2006. He’d eventually captain the Canes, and he ranks second in franchise history behind Hall of Famer and current general manager Ron Francis in goals, assists and points.

Discovering Eric was special

Since debuting in the 2003-04 season, Eric Staal, now 32, ranks third amongst active players in games played, fifth with 353 goals, seventh with 846 points and eighth with 109 power-play goals.

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Even when Eric was growing up, Henry and Linda didn’t fully understand how special a player their oldest son was until taking him to the Ontario bantam championships in Toronto at age 15.

“Because of where we are, our team generally has no competition, essentially,” Henry Staal, who played college hockey at Lakehead University, said. “But you go down to Toronto, and you’re playing the best teams in Toronto, and Eric just lit it up. Like he played so well, like he really played well. And all of a sudden these agents started coming up because we didn’t have an agent.

“We didn’t know you needed one. A little naïve, right? Agents and scouts kept coming up to us. And we’re going, ‘What’s going on?’ And then they’re saying, ‘Well, this kid, he’s going to get drafted like in the first round.’ I’m thinking, ‘Wow, he’s probably got something here. He might be able to do something.’”

Still, even then, it never occurred to Henry Staal that these agents and scouts were actually talking about the NHL.

“I thought it was just to play in the Ontario Hockey League,” Henry Staal said. “I knew what the OHL was. We didn’t have an OHL team, but I’m kind of a hockey guy.  So I knew the teams and a lot of the names. And guys from Thunder Bay have gone down there before. You know, from Alex Delvecchio to Nelson Pyatt, there’s a few of them.

“But I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d have a boy in the NHL.”

Or, four of them.

Eric Staal lit it up for the Peterborough Petes, was drafted second overall in 2003 by the Hurricanes and was ultimately followed to pro hockey by Marc, now 30, Jordan, now 29, and Jared, now 27. Jared played two NHL games and is contemplating retirement after playing last year in Scotland. He’s currently helping Dad on the farm.

Growing up, there was a Staal sibling rivalry.

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“They went at it. We didn’t interfere … too much,” Henry Staal said, grinning. “It was far enough away from the house that we couldn’t really hear them. Could kind of see them through the trees, going up and down playing hockey and sometimes pushing and shoving.”

Raising four pro hockey players

How the heck did Henry and Linda Staal, who have been married 34 years and have eight grandchildren (six born in the United States, one in Canada, and one in Scotland), raise four professional hockey-playing sons?

“I think a part of it, in my mind, is because Eric, he’s the oldest, just like any or most families, he kind of set the bar,” Henry Staal said. “And then the other guys just kind of because of their inner competitiveness, they might have been thinking, ‘Well, if that guy can do it, why can’t I do it?’ So, they kind of followed his lead in some respects.

“And, for Eric, he’s naturally driven to be the best person, best player, whatever, that he can be. So, the other guys, I mean they have it too, naturally, but I think they followed him, somewhat, like that way.”

Linda Staal said they didn’t do anything special.

“You just raise your children. They liked to play hockey, and we loved to watch it,” Linda said.

Interestingly, Eric Staal’s good friend and current Wild teammate Matt Cullen — they also were teammates in Carolina as Cup champs — sees parallels between Eric’s parents and his own, Terry and Nancy Cullen. The Cullens raised three professional hockey-playing boys — Mark and Joe, being the others.

“Just salt of the earth people,” Cullen said of Henry and Linda Staal. “Hard-working. Down to earth. Just good, good people.”

The Staals say maybe one key is they weren’t overbearing, nutty hockey parents.

“I tried not to be, and part of that is because we have four boys,” Henry said. “So, if you have four kids playing, whether it be AAA or whatever, if you get all wound up with every little thing, with every child, you’d drive yourself bonkers. Thinking back, probably with Eric — who was the first one — I was more wound up than I should have been, in my mind.

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“I realized it. As soon as you start having more you realize that, this is stupid. So, you know, you just go out and enjoy it. And we’re busy, so you couldn’t focus on one kid, you couldn’t micro-manage. Because you have four of them! You can’t! So you just got to go and watch, and support them, and pay the money.

“And that’s it. So, for them, looking at us, it’s not that we didn’t care. But we realized that you can’t start getting all wound up about every little thing that that one’s doing, because you’ve got that one, and that one, and that one.”

Hard work pays off

To this day, Henry Staal owns a 600-acre sod farm in Thunder Bay. He and brother Gary run the operation with only a couple other employees and, of course, Jared, “who cuts the grass,” Linda said.

“We just supply now. We don’t do any contracting. Just supply. Grow it, and ship it out,” Henry Staal said of the sod that’s especially used for Kentucky Bluegrass.

Both Henry and Linda’s parents immigrated to Canada from Holland in the 50s.

Henry’s dad, John, started the farm later that decade for a landscaping business. Henry worked the farm until he was a teenager and eventually took it over.

“But nobody was growing sod,” Henry said. “We were importing from Minnesota, actually. Importing sod from Minnesota. So, we thought, ‘Why can’t we grow it here?’ So my dad was the one. He bought the first 100 acres, and then we decided to kind of focus on that. So we kind of got out of the landscaping end of it, and just focused on sod.”

As kids, all the boys worked on the farm, but Eric probably the most “because he really enjoyed it,” Henry said. “To this day, he’s the most interested of the four boys about what’s going on. Like he would lay irrigation.”

“And drive the tractor,” Linda said.

“He did a lot of tractor work, pretty young, too,” Henry said, laughing. “And then they laid sod, too. Back in those days we were still laying sod. We’ve kind of got out of that. It’s a lot more headaches, you need nine, 10 employees. When our kids were there, we had pretty cheap labor.”

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But the Staals think this is where Eric learned the importance of hard work.

Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher has been around Eric and Jordan Staal in his career, and interviewed Marc during his draft year.

“They’re just great people,” Fletcher said. “They’re hard-working people, they’re humble, excellent teammates and love the game. Obviously Henry and Linda did a great job of raising them.

“It had to be a pretty cool environment to grow up in.”

Back in Thunder Bay, the family is as tight-knit as can be. They started a foundation to raise money for families and children battling cancer, and Eric, Marc and Jordan have homes next to each other on the same lake.

All summer is spent pontooning, fishing and chasing their kids around.

“And lots of golf,” Eric said.

Keeping up with all the boys

Henry and Linda Staal, whether they’re in Thunder Bay or their winter home on the west coast of Florida, try to watch every NHL game played by Eric, Marc and Jordan, named Hurricanes co-captain this season with Justin Faulk.

The Staals loved when Eric and Jordan were Carolina teammates because it meant one less game to watch. At the start of every hockey season, the parents create a calendar and insert all of their kids’ games. They used to set up three televisions for the nights they all were playing.

“But that didn’t work so well,” Henry Staal said. “I could do two, and then record one.”

They are beyond proud of their four sons, and it’s clear they’re especially impressed how Eric, a true pro and gamer, has only missed 22 games in his career.

“I guess old-school is a pretty good way to describe him,” Henry said. “I mean all our guys are kind of the same that way.”

Eric Staal resurrected his career last season when he led the Wild with 28 goals. All was going well until a frightening incident in the final game of the playoffs when he crashed head-first into the end boards.

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“Very disappointed, especially the way last season finished [with a first-round exit] and being in the hospital when we were officially eliminated,” said Staal, who (luckily) suffered a concussion and nothing more catastrophic. “I’ve never been through something like that before. The days after, it was such a letdown and then dealing with some of the effects of the injury were hard.

“Credit to my wife and family for picking me up in those moments because it was tough dealing with the sudden end of the season when you were on such a good team and then the headaches and other effects.”

Overall, Staal said he was happy with his season, “but I’m not satisfied. I still feel like I’ve got a little chip on my shoulder that I want to prove again that I’m still a top player that can go against any other team’s top players and top two lines and be effective.

“Disappointing finish, but it’s a new year and another opportunity to prove again to myself and the team that I can be a big part of the puzzle.”

(Top image submitted by Eric Staal: From left to right, Jordan, Marc, Eric, Linda, Jared and Henry Staal)

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