Marc Staal On His Eye Injury: "I Have No Limitations At All"
Staal's eye seems to have healed nicely.
There has been a lot of people keeping a close watch on Marc Staal right now. Not only is he coming off a gruesome and scary eye injury that forced him to miss a good chunk of last year (including all but one playoff game), but he's also taking part in Team Canada's Olympic training camp.
New York Rangers fans have been looking to see if there are any lingering effects from the eye injury that caused Staal to admit he didn't know if he would ever be 100% again.
Well, you can squash those concerns. Staal talked to reporters Tuesday and gave everyone a big vote of confidence that his eye has finally healed:
"I have no limitations at all. It's been a great summer of training," Staal said. "Physically from the time I was cleared to start working out, there wasn't anything I couldn't do as far as physically getting ready. So that part of it has been really good this summer, just getting into shape, getting stronger and getting ready for the season."
That's not a wishy-washy response from Staal. That's a pretty big statement on his eye. Staal also went on to mention what his issues were last year - where he returned for one game in the first round of the playoffs before removing himself from further contests because he wasn't comfortable.
"It was more of just adapting to the depth perception and things like that when I was coming back," Staal explained. "It just wasn't clicking when I was trying to come back in the playoffs there. But with the time off and the training now, everything's back to normal and I'm feeling really good."
This was a really big question mark for the Rangers coming into this season. Especially since they let Steve Eminger (who was basically the team's "break in case of emergency" defenseman) walk and had to watch Michael Sauer retire.
But this is fantastic news.
Thoughts?
