Carolina Hurricanes' Elias Lindholm (16) scores on Toronto Maple Leafs' goalie Jonathan Bernier (45) during first period NHL action in Toronto on Jan. 19, 2015.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
There he was, in the flesh, skating and scoring and leading the Carolina Hurricanes to another win: Eric Staal, the coveted captain, a big, veteran centre who could well have a new home in the near future.
Which obviously will pique the interests of Toronto Maple Leafs fans. (Those not sleeping in their Air Canada Centre seats, anyway.)
The Leafs lost again on Monday. This – a 4-1 defeat as listless as they come – was their 13th regulation loss in their past 16 games, equalling the level of futility they achieved at the end of last season when they crashed out of the playoffs so dramatically.
The difference this time? There are 35 games of this to go.
The Leafs look like a defeated group – frustrated, fatalistic and finished. If there hadn't been a coach fired two weeks ago, you might expect another one would be, based on the mood, except that wouldn't exactly fix the problem, would it?
This is a franchise with a multitude of issues, not the least of which is a growing history of these implosions, which have now happened in one form or another in four consecutive seasons.
With the coach gone, the roster has understandably come under fire. And everyone wants a solution.
Some want an easy one. Some feel it could be Eric Staal.
It's tempting to point at someone such as Staal – or Mike Richards in Los Angeles – or any of the other names out there that fill a position the Leafs desperately need. They obviously have to get a lot better on the blueline and at centre to have a hope of being more than a mediocre mess in this league, and those are two of the names on the market.
But they're hardly the solutions.
Staal has had a good career and remains a good player. His first of two goals on Monday – a nice play after taking a pass from brother Jordan to give the Hurricanes a three-goal lead only 48 seconds into the second period – was his 304th in 810 games, giving him 19 more goals than any other player taken in that ridiculously deep 2003 draft.
That's not easy to do.
But he's also getting old. Staal will turn 31 this fall, and with the NHL increasingly becoming a young man's league, that's a problem.
He will slow down. He has already battled injuries and his scoring rate has been declining for three consecutive years, to the point he's on a 54-point pace with the admittedly weak Hurricanes.
The Leafs, meanwhile, are the Leafs. They're miles away from contention. It's going to take at least a couple years of painstaking building through smart decisions to get there, and by the time they do, Staal won't be 31 anymore.
He – like Dion Phaneuf and others already in Toronto's lineup – will be firmly into retirement age.
Only 25 per cent of the current forwards in the NHL are 31 or older for a reason: It's the wrong side of the curve, by a fair margin. Fans don't need to look further than David Clarkson for a view of what a player can look like on the wrong side of 30, and he's one of dozens of examples among players expected to produce points.
Dany Heatley, whose draft position (second overall) and career numbers mirror Staal's, is another, and at 33, he's toiling in the minors with three points in 10 games.
Staal doesn't necessarily have to fall that far to be a bad bet at $8.25-million (U.S.) on the cap, and who knows what futures might be given up in a trade.
The reality is there's no quick fix for the Leafs. As terrific talk radio fodder as it is, one or two trades for "name" players on the downside of their careers isn't a solution: It's a continuation of a problem that has plagued the organization for ages.
No foresight. No anticipation. No vision, other than trying to sell magic beans (like Dave Bolland's third-line grit) as the cure-all.
If they go that route, they're doomed to keep repeating the same tortured path again and again.
The Leafs don't necessarily need a complete and total gut job to move forward, but what they absolutely cannot do is bring in more bandages and try to improve by inches.
Not with how far they have to go.