Stefan Noesen’s first NHL goal in 32 months was a waypoint on a much longer journey

Somebody might get to stay up late more often. Leighton Noesen got to go to the hockey game Monday night. Her father scored his first NHL goal in almost 32 months, as he almost always does when she’s present at his games, if not always.

“At least 20 last year,” Stefan Noesen said Monday night. “You could look it up. Every Sunday game.”

Noesen has witnesses. He warned Brett Pesce before Monday’s game, Pesce later confirmed, getting it on the record before Noesen’s power-play tip opened the scoring for the Carolina Hurricanes in a 3-2 shootout win over the Washington Capitals.

Leighton turns 2 later this month, so she hasn’t had a long time to exert this effect on her father’s career, but it has been a remarkable one. He led the AHL in scoring last year, and Noesen’s first goal for the Hurricanes was a long time coming – temporally and spiritually, not the conclusion of a long journey for Noesen, but certainly a milestone upon it.

He was once a hot prospect, a first-round pick after scoring 34 goals in junior hockey as an 18-year-old, before going on a decade-long odyssey through the transaction ledger, bouncing around the NHL and across the country, at one point playing for five NHL teams in five years. Noesen had 13 goals and 27 points in 72 games with the New Jersey Devils in 2017-18 and never came close to that again. By the time the Hurricanes signed him as a free agent in August 2021, he was basically a 28-year-old spare part. Roster filler.

Then Noesen scored 48 goals last year for Chicago (AHL), helping the Wolves to the Calder Cup — the second for the Hurricanes’ prospects in as many tries, thanks to a two-year COVID hiatus. He’d never scored that many goals in a season, at any level. He hadn’t scored 20 in a decade. Everything that scouts saw from him in junior came flooding back, like waking up from a dream.

And now he’s back in the NHL. With a goal to his name. To start.

“I just kind of got my touch back,” Noesen said. “For a couple years there it was really hard on me mentally, hard on my family, hard on everyone in my life. To be able to get a chance like I did last year, be able to get my game back, I felt like I was struggling with that for quite a while, since I was in New Jersey. I felt good. I was happy to be in one spot for the whole year instead of bouncing up and down. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but for me and my confidence, that’s what I needed.”

In Chicago, playing the Hurricanes’ system, everything clicked. Noesen was called up to play in two games in December, but for the most part he put down roots in Chicago. He felt at home. He thrived. Everything that he had been missing came back to him. His hands remembered what they had once known, a decade earlier.

“He came up during the year and was really good, but we didn’t really have any injuries,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “He had a great year down there, obviously. I think his game suits what we need. It’s a good fit. He’s definitely earned his way into this league. He was in it, and then he kind of had to, however you want to put it, but he definitely earned his way back to the NHL.”

Fourth line, first PP

Noesen beat out prospect Jack Drury and veteran Ryan Dzingel for a roster spot in camp, in large part because of his versatility, his ability to crash and grind as well as score around the net. He has been a fixture on the Hurricanes’ fourth line and first power-play unit to start the season, an odd combination even if there are examples over the course of hockey history where a player with solid skills in close quarters gets an opportunity with the man advantage he wouldn’t get at even strength.

The Hurricanes have used Jordan Staal there in the past, and Tomas Holmstrom made a career out of it with the Detroit Red Wings – but Noesen showed Monday night why he’s there, deflecting a Brent Burns shot past Darcy Kuemper. Noesen scored a good chunk of his goals in Chicago that way, standing on the goalie’s toes, trading places with Drury in the high slot the way he trades places now with Sebastian Aho, and that’s how he opened his account with the Hurricanes.

“He can score,” Brind’Amour said. “He’s a big body. Great hand-eye. It fits that position. I think that’s a good fit for him.”

But on the power play or not, that’s Noesen’s game. In the corners. From the faceoff circles down. Grinding it out. And getting in the way in front. Ask him how many of his goals with the Wolves looked like Monday’s, and the question spills forward and backward.

“Just last year? Or my whole career?” Noesen said. “My whole career, I kind of feel like that’s what it’s been. I take pride in that. It’s something I work on all the time. I always want tips. I get yelled at for that every now and then. It’s just something I love doing. I try to make an art out of it.”

So, while Noesen contemplates letting his toddler stay up late for the sake of his career, that resurrected career proceeds along a new course. There’s a place for him with the Hurricanes. There’s a place for him in the NHL.

“He belongs here,” Pesce said. “You can just tell, the way he plays.”

Even Noesen couldn’t always tell. There’s always a leap of faith for the athlete who isn’t seeing things go his or her way, the belief that things can or will turn around. It’s about being stubborn as much as it is being skilled. It’s the long wait for a season like his last one and a moment like this one: the puck in the net, your daughter in the stands, your future — your career, your life — suddenly laid out before you. Again.

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