Story by Kurt Dusterberg
Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour spends most of his days living in the moment. For the past 37 years, his life has revolved around the National Hockey League’s schedule, where it takes 82 games across 6 months just to reach the playoffs.
So it may come as a surprise that he has given some thought to a couple of upcoming milestones—ones that have defined not only his career, but also the arc of sports history in North Carolina.
Brind’Amour arrived in Raleigh in January of 2000, a veteran forward traded from the Philadelphia Flyers. The Hurricanes were playing their first season in Raleigh following two uninspiring years in Greensboro—their temporary home after relocating from Hartford, Connecticut.
“I knew as little about North Carolina as probably anyone,” Brind’Amour says. “I knew of Michael Jordan as a kid. I got a little glimpse of it when N.C. State won under Jimmy V. There’s no way I would have thought I would make this my home for 25 years.”
But it’s a different hockey anniversary that has left a more indelible impact. The upcoming NHL season marks the 20th anniversary of Carolina’s Stanley Cup championship in 2006. Brind’Amour was named team captain before the season started, and what followed took the hockey world—and the Triangle—by surprise. The 35-year-old forward led the Hurricanes on a 2-month march through the playoffs that culminated in a Game 7 win against the Edmonton Oilers in the final. As the team’s leader, Brind’Amour secured his place in team history and put his stamp on the playoff run with a team-best 12 goals.
Brind’Amour retired after the 2009–10 season, but he has remained a Hurricane ever since. He served seven seasons as an assistant coach during a 9-year playoff drought. But upon being named head coach before the 2018–19 season, he embarked on another journey of lifting the Hurricanes to the heights of the NHL. He has led the team to playoffs—and won a round in the postseason—in each of his 7 years behind the bench. Last season, he earned his 300th win faster than any coach in NHL history.
The road to 25 years in Raleigh has been marked with challenges, too. Brind’Amour retired as a player in 2010 when the Hurricanes bought out the final year of his contract. And while his playing career suggests he is worthy of enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, he has never been selected—for reasons beyond his control.
Heading into his 8th season, his unparalleled success as a coach—the team has reached the Eastern Conference Final in two of the past three seasons—has only raised expectations for the Hurricanes.
Over the summer, the 55-year-old took time to discuss his quarter century with the Hurricanes. Sitting in the coaches’ offices at Invisalign Arena, he spoke candidly about the highs and lows, the Hurricanes’ resurgence, and the expectations of winning another Cup.
MIDTOWN: It’s not very often that someone spends such a long time connected to one franchise. This has become an entire era of your life—25 years. That’s a big chunk of your life.
The first thing I always think about, honestly, is how fast things go. It’s almost sad for me. Life’s going. It’s happening for everybody, and it’s ticking on. I just want to enjoy every day. You’re at a different stage of your life. It goes by so fast.
And I guess one of the takeaways is that you never could have seen it coming, right?
No chance—that’s what life is about. You just never know how things are going to go. That’s what I’ve taken out of that. Even players I’ve come across over the years. I grew up idolizing certain players, like Wayne Gretzky. I got to play with him in the [1998 Winter] Olympics. I never thought I’d get to play with him and room with him. And now, I don’t call him a friend, but he texts me. You don’t know who the next guy you’re going to come across is. That’s what’s great about our life, because there is a lot of change. You don’t know who’s going to be impactful in your life. That’s what hockey does for you.
You played 21 seasons in the NHL. Was it difficult to retire?
For me, the end was real tough because the last year was brutal. And yet I still felt like I had a lot left. I was 39 going on 40. My conditioning was great. For me, getting cut down to [playing] basically 6 minutes a night, that’s what did it.
Then I couldn’t get out of my own way, playing 6 minutes and trying to produce like I was getting 20 minutes. Now I am playing poorly, but it’s because I’ve got to score on this shift or I’m not getting another one. That’s what happened at my end.
They didn’t offer me a chance to come back. At that point I had to decide: Okay, go play somewhere else or be done with it? There’s no way I was going to leave my kids to play. I know it wouldn’t have worked. So it was an easy decision in that regard. I had a good perspective on it, I think.
You were an assistant coach for the last 7 years of a 9-year playoff drought for this franchise. When you took over as head coach, what made you think you could turn this team into a winner so fast?
For that 7-year period, having three different coaches [Paul Maurice, Kirk Muller, and Bill Peters], that was probably the best thing that could have happened because I got an education three different ways. All of them were different. I had ideas in my head that I thought would be better. I was like, I think we’re missing the boat here. There’s something that none of these guys are doing.
[Video coach] Chris Huffine and I sat there in the summer putting video together. I remember thinking, we’re changing how the game is played. We’re going to be so much more aggressive than anyone has ever really done. We were going to put a real “pressure” game together and see what happens. That’s the way I would want to play. And if you’re not as talented as the other teams, it’s a way to kind of close the gap. And we weren’t, if we’re honest. We weren’t as talented.
I had no idea if it was going to work, but I felt like we had great people in this locker room. There were some good, young kids and a leadership group. I don’t want to say there were mess-ups [previously] in how we handled that, but there clearly were. I thought, I don’t have to do anything. This should get us a little better. And it just worked out.
There’s a line between players and coaches. As a coach, having a relationship with players is important, but it’s not the same as interacting as a teammate. What is it like trying to straddle that line as a coach?
I just had this conversation with my wife because we’re going to [Jalen] Chatfield’s wedding. I was joking that I’ve got to get out of there by 10 o’clock because the guys want to have fun. I’ve kind of passed that now, because the guys know they can have fun around me.
I do think that once you get to know guys as long as I have in here, it changes a little bit. We do have a coach-player relationship, but I think it’s more out of respect for the positions. That’s what makes it special for me. For a lot of the guys I have, it’s more than that. We have genuine friendships. There is a line, and I know there is—but there really isn’t.
What is a night like for you after a loss?
The losses blow. It’s probably what wears me out the most; you never get back to level. And the wins don’t do anything for you, and that’s the problem. They don’t even out. And that’s a good thing, because of what the expectations are. We’re supposed to win every night, which is tough to do. As a player, you only worry about your mistakes. As the coach, everybody’s mistakes are your mistakes. That’s where the stress comes in. I’ve got to do a better job of letting it go, but it’s hard to do because you know it all matters. I don’t think I ever will, which is the nature of it. But that’s part of the gig.
During the summer, the Hurricanes signed the top forward on the free agent market, Nikolaj Ehlers, from the Winnipeg Jets. And the team traded for a quality defenseman in K’Andre Miller from the New York Rangers. These are impact players that can help you win.
That’s what I like about where we’re at as an organization. If there’s something out there that can make us better, we’re going to try to figure out how to get it. Ehlers is a piece of that. Can he play with some of our top guys and make them better? For me, it’s talent, and that’s what Ehlers has.
Whatever we think the potential is with [Miller], we’ve got to get it out of him. We know from watching that he’s big, he’s strong, he can skate. He’s got a great shot, and all the instincts are there.
You’re hopeful it makes you better. The additions were the best we could do. It’s already a great group that we have. The group does a great job of bringing in the new people and making them feel at home so that they can play their best.
This season will be the 20th anniversary of winning the Stanley Cup. Do you find yourself reflecting on it very often?
Yeah, I love thinking back on it. I just love the relationships we forged in that time, literally forever friendships. I could not have talked to some guys in 10 years, but there’s this special bond you have. It goes so much deeper than winning a Cup. I don’t know how to explain it, really.
So, 20 years? The biggest thing is just time, the value of it. Take advantage of every day. That’s what we preach here. Don’t look ahead. Try to enjoy this game. Give it your best, because you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. We can’t control anything down the line. Time is the biggest thing. We’re running out of it.
You’ve won the Stanley Cup as a player. What would it mean to you to win it again as a coach?
I’ve done it, and I’d love to do it 100 times. It’s not something that gets old. But it’s so special of a thing that you want people close to you—the people who have sacrificed—you want them to experience it. That means everyone, from the organization down to the fans. You really want it for them because it is so special. And I know that now by doing it. For me to be the coach of it? Whatever. That’s kind of the sidebar of it.
To see people, the way they think and feel about themselves when they can actually say they’ve won. To me it’s so silly that you have to win it to be a winner, but just think about what has happened to our team over 7 years: if we had won one time in 7 years and been [lousy] the rest, everyone would think of us differently. But we’re knocking on the doorstep. It would change perception and everything, and that would be huge.
