Marc Staal took another stride on his path to recovery in skating for the third straight day, this time with a handful of teammates at the morning optional preceding the Rangers’ 3-2 shootout victory over the Maple Leafs Wednesday night at the Garden.
The alternate captain, who has missed 19 games since being struck just above the right eye with a deflected slap shot in a game against Philadelphia on March 5, said he was sore and tired following the up-tempo workout, but, “It’s not my body I’m worried about. The adjustment on the ice I have to make because of my eye is the biggest thing.”
Staal, who has added an oversized visor to his standard equipment after previously having gone barefaced through his career, said although he has full peripheral vision, his vision out of the right eye remains blurred.
“Things on the ice, like depth perception are just a little bit different,” he said. “That’s going to take some time to get used to.”
The regular season ends two weeks from Saturday, on April 27. There is neither a timetable for Staal’s potential return nor a guarantee he will be able to make it back into the lineup before the playoffs commence … if there are playoffs, that is, for the Rangers. They were in eighth place just two points out of sixth before last night’s match, but also just two points clear of 10th place.
It will take some time for Staal to regain the necessary conditioning. It will also be necessary for No. 18 to participate in at least a couple of full practices in which he can test his vision in game-like conditions.
“Full-tempo practices, guys checking me, things like that where everything becomes automatic and where I’m not taking too long to make a decision or taking too long to read a coverage,” Staal said. “We’ll see how that goes over time.
“The shooting and stuff is fine and passing is OK and obviously they’ll get better too. It’s just an adjustment with things coming at me, catching passes, things in tight,” he said. “Things like that will have to get better.”
Staal said that he had talked to other players who had suffered eye injuries, including Dany Heatley, Manny Malhotra — who suffered a far more serious injury that required surgery — and Colin White.
“I talked to those guys about the ups and downs of an eye injury,” he said. “Just talking to them about the adjustment they made on the ice and how things eventually got completely back to normal for them was a big help, just knowing that’s in the future.
“Colin White said a funny thing. He was telling me it was more difficult to live everyday life with blurriness in the eye than playing hockey,” Staal said. “It’s just a matter of time before it gets better. My eye is continuing to heal and is still getting clear. We don’t know where it’s going to go from there.”
Staal, 26, started his NHL career with the Rangers in 2007-08 by playing in 306 of 308 games, missing only a pair with the flu on Feb. 16-17, 2008, until he was concussed by older brother Eric in that fateful Feb. 22, 2011 match in Raleigh and forced out of the lineup three days later after playing in 247 straight.
After missing five games the remainder of that season, Staal was out for the first 36 last year while suffering from post concussion syndrome. He had just begun to regain his form as a top-pair shutdown defenseman in the couple of weeks leading to the latest calamity.
“I don’t get the usual ones, do I?” Staal asked rhetorically. “Two years back-to-back like this is tough, but I just look at it as a bump in the road and I look forward to playing for a long time.”