Rod Brind'Amour Interview

I'll tell you what's been pretty tough. Yesterday was the 11-year anniversary of Scott Walker scoring the game-winning goal, game seven, double overtime against the Boston Bruins in 2009. And then you're seeing these anniversaries one year ago, the Hurricanes advancing past the Washington Capitals and past the New York Islanders on their way to the East Conference Finals. And you just start thinking to yourself, oh man, this is kind of what we've been without. No NBA basketball, no NHL hockey as well. And we're being joined by somebody I'm sure is missing it as well.

Rod Brind'Amour, the head coach of the Hurricanes, is with us. I see it every single day when I look in the mirror. I haven't shaved in a month and a half. I'm not good at growing facial hair like I know you're probably not as well. Have you ever even tried to grow the facial hair long at any point? Well, it's funny you say that because my kids were giving me a hard time about that the other day at the dinner table. I guess our game was on, game seven. They were like, why are you the only guy out there with no beard?

And it's true. I've never really tried because when I did try, it didn't look so good. So I better just leave it clean. I'm just dying to get back into a kickboxing gym that I have here in the tryout. Without it, I've been kind of out of shape a bit. But you were known for your workout regimen.

So I got to know, what has the regimen been for the last two months? Well, yeah, I am a routine kind of guy on that. I have to exercise every day. So I definitely am at home doing it for the most part.

So it's not quite the same, but I start my day every day, essentially a little bike ride at home and then get after it a little bit in the weight room. And then I'm still working and working from home. We got a lot of video to do.

We're preparing for potentially a draft and potentially any startup at some point. So you're just kind of trying to keep yourself busy that way. How optimistic are you about a restart?

I don't know. I want to be. But obviously, it's just weird. There's so many dynamics. There seems to be so many issues. It's going to take certainly a lot from a lot of people to make it work. But I certainly hope we can get back into the one thing just to get some sort of normalcy in your life for a lot of people. And I think that's kind of what I'd like to see. But take me into some of the behind the scenes where you're also charged with keeping tabs on a team who you can't see in person.

So you got younger guys, you got teenagers. Of course, you got management. So I'm sure you're in touch with Don Waddell and also Tom Dundon. What does that communication structure look like? Well, it's daily for the most part in terms of the communication from management and from Tom and Don. And then organizationally, like I said, we do Zoom meetings three times a week and doing various things. And then the big issue obviously for me is with the players. And that's been the toughest because they're scattered all over the world right now. And really, what are you accomplishing?

We have met on a Zoom kind of meeting. They do a little bit of training together on that. But it's just not great. So our strength coach is giving each guy individual workouts based on what they have available to them. In some places it's opened up a little more, especially in Europe. So those guys are actually a little more ahead of being able to do things. But as far as being connected, it's not been great, obviously.

But hopefully if we get some news in the near future of a plan at least, then maybe we can start getting back together a little bit. It's Hurricanes head coach Rob Brind'Amour with us here on Sports Hub Triad. You mentioned you were looking back at Game 7. When you watched the Stanley Cup championship in 2006, June 19th, what sticks out to you when you watch that game? Well, it's special again to see it. We watched it with the family. My youngest kid who had never seen it, he basically watched a couple of shifts and then left like you. My older son who was actually at the game watched it very interestingly.

Just a lot of good memories. To be honest with you watching it, how great a team we really were. There were a lot of great players on that team.

That team doesn't get a lot of the props it does nationally or in the hockey world, but there's a lot of great hockey players on that team. And obviously you have to do the win. What do you remember most about the post-game celebration? How much sleep did you get that night?

Oh, you don't sleep after that. That's obviously why you play the game and the whole nine yards. Everybody understands that. Just what all went into it. Again, not to relive it too much, but we had an older team with a bunch of guys that had never won for the most part. So it was just really, really special to finally get that done.

And then with those kind of guys, everyone just gave everything they had to win. It's special. It's something you want to try to recreate.

It's obviously certainly not easy. Have you had a chance to watch any of the Last Dance docuseries? Oh, yeah.

I love it. I grew up, obviously, Michael Jordan was the man. So obviously watching him and just being in that era where he was it. So pretty neat to relive that too. Just puts you back where you were watching that, remembering all the stuff that went on and kind of remembering how crazy it was.

And then hearing it from him. I think it's awesome. I mean, it's great. It's the best TV there is obviously right now. There's not much to watch, but it's when you involve the greatest athletes in the world and then getting the insight that to me that the whole behind the scenes stuff.

That's I just can't get enough of that. Well, last week, I think we had the most substantive stuff where you have him describing his leadership methods, where he would ride Scotty Burrell, his teammate, and in order to make him tougher. And he was asked about how that might have made people think he wasn't a good guy. And he talked about winning comes at a cost. Leadership comes at a cost. And he had to take a break after answering that question. When people talk about you, Rod, they talk about leadership as well. So when you see the way that he went about it and just how much determination was there and how intentional it was, what went through you? Well, I get it.

I totally understand. He was about winning. And at the end of the day, so are his teammates. They don't look at winning.

I guarantee you that. Now, did he treat them a certain way? Maybe they didn't like, well, you know what? I still say they would do it if they got him those things. And so he just felt like a leader.

He had to push them a certain way to get the most out of them so they could win. I don't think it was personal. I don't think he liked someone, didn't like him. He's like, I got to do this to get the most out of this guy. And he said it, and you mentioned it perfectly. It's painful a little bit because I'm sure he's, I don't know him.

I've never really met him. But I don't think he went out there to say, I'm going to be a bad guy and treat people that way. It's just he knew he had to do that to get the best out of them. People describe you as a leader by example, but is there an example you think of where you had to get into somebody just to get them motivated to get them in line? Yeah.

I wouldn't say all the time, but there are certainly times where you get into people's faces, but I think we're talking different players. I mean, he's the best of the best, and I certainly wasn't that, but a different style of leadership too. I mean, and hockey's way different, I think, than basketball because really they have five guys playing at a time or six or seven guys that really are on the team that they count on where we're 20, 22 guys. And they all count almost the same. So we have more leaders than just one guy, if that makes sense. You can lean on other guys to be the bad guy if you follow me, and I can be the guy that's the, you know, okay, I'm going to do it by example. We got Ray Whitney's going to be maybe the tougher guy or the funny guy. There's just different levels of it, but it all has to kind of happen.

It's Rob Brind'Amour with the C-Road Sports Hub giant. So Sunday's going to be the finale, and we're going to see behind-the-scenes footage of the flu game as they won their sixth title. You had several broken noses. You played through injuries.

You were just seen to be a tough guy. What's the craziest thing you've ever played through? Well, the craziest would have, well, it's crazy, but I had a broken foot when I got traded here, and we thought it had kind of healed. And so when I got here, I played that year with it, the half year, and then, but it was not right, and I kept, I was constantly limping around, and there was a lot of pain, and then found out it was broken the whole time I was playing.

So, you know, I felt like, man, you know, part of me was like, I'm glad that the season was over, but part of me was like, you know, at least I had an excuse in my head, like, okay, and I knew I wasn't playing that well. So I didn't really know I was playing through it, but maybe, obviously, if we had known, I wouldn't have kept playing, but that injury never healed, you know, from the trade when I got here. So that's probably the craziest thing, just because it went so long, you know, but all, you know, that's the one thing about hockey players is every one of these guys that you talk to, especially back in the day, and I say in the back, you know, maybe 10, 15 years ago, everybody was playing through stuff, and we had different methods of, you know, dealing with pain that was allowed. Now, you know, you just, it was the norm. No one was doing anything intentional, but it was, you know, different medicines and things that you did to numb, end up to go and play, and everyone was doing it. You know, now we know better that that's certainly not, that doesn't happen anymore for the better, but all the guys back in the day played through a lot, a lot of things. Give me the thing that you use to try and numb a pain or something like that, that you look back on, you say, that was stupid. Well, they don't do it anymore, but I don't know if these things called tortile shots, I think that those went in, they were just a numbing medicine, but they don't use those anymore, but I can remember, you know, there was both five of us lining up before the game to get those shots, because everybody was so banged up, and you couldn't function if you didn't numb the pain a little, and I don't think they'd realize now that that's not the way to go, so we don't have those lineups anymore in the medical office, but, you know, again, that was just kind of the norm. Rod, you're the absolute best, thank you for doing this, I look forward to seeing hopefully some hockey sometime soon, I hope your family's safe as well, thanks so much. Thank you man, appreciate it, take care. You got it, that's Rod Brind'Amour, the head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes, and he's being modest, he's one of the toughest dudes that's ever played for the Carolina Hurricanes.