{"id":298,"date":"2010-10-04T20:56:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T03:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsports.us\/?p=298"},"modified":"2011-01-15T13:10:05","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T18:10:05","slug":"hurricanes-duke-it-out-with-russians-staal-removed-as-safety-precaution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=298","title":{"rendered":"Hurricanes duke it out with Russians; Staal removed as safety precaution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Carolina Hurricanes’ coach Paul Maurice decided to remove captain Eric Staal from the team’s exhibition game against SKA St. Petersburg in Russia Monday in the second period as a safety precaution.<\/p>\n

Hurricanes’ players and coaches were upset by what they believed were deliberate low blows by the Russian team, which defeated Carolina 5-3 in the exhibition game.<\/p>\n

“It seemed like they were getting awfully close to his knees and there wasn\u2019t enough concern out there,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cHe\u2019s a star NHL player and should be playing in the National Hockey League.”<\/p>\n

Maurice said he expected a lot of fights and a lot of bs, and that’s just what happened.<\/p>\n

The players, many of whom have played against Russians in youth and junior hockey, weren’t surprised by the rough play but they took exception to the hits to knees.<\/p>\n

Staal, who came away with a cut under his eye, said that he received two low hits. \u201cHe kind of dove at my knees,\u201d said Staal, who was lifted shortly thereafter. \u201cI\u2019m a big guy, I can take a hit, but when the guy lunges at your knee when you\u2019re going full speed, you can blow an ACL.”<\/p>\n

Several fights ensued after that as Hurricanes’ Jay Harrison and Joni Pitkanen were both tossed from the game.<\/p>\n

Maurice said that the team bonded and built chemistry as a result of the game and its altercations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carolina Hurricanes’ coach Paul Maurice decided to remove captain Eric Staal from the team’s exhibition game against SKA St. Petersburg in Russia Monday in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}