With Game 1 of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final set to take place on Tuesday night, it's been a long journey for the Carolina Hurricanes to get to this point. The last time the Hurricanes played for the Stanley Cup was in 2006. It was the last time Carolina won the Stanley Cup. One in common in all of this is coach Rod Brind'Amour.
Brind'Amour captained the Hurricanes to their last Stanley Cup championship in franchise history at the time. Now 20 years later, he gets the chance to lift the Stanley Cup again, but this time as a coach. Thanks to a management team that believed in him eight years ago and stuck with him through all the tough times of not making it past the Conference Finals, it's been great.
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During his tenure at Carolina as head coach, before reaching the Cup Finals in 2026, the Hurricanes reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019, 2023, and 2025, winning just one game. Going back to 2009, the Hurricanes had a 1-17 record in their previous 18 games in the Eastern Conference Final after losing Game 1 to the Montreal Canadiens.
That was before they reeled off four straight to return to the Stanley Cup Finals. Although the record is not the best in the Eastern Conference finals, going through these tough times made him happy to get through that round. But you understand that the work is not finished.
“Yeah, it was weird after the game,” Brind'Amour said at Media Day. “You wanted to be happy and excited for the guys, and yet it was kind of.. I don't know, it wasn't all that exciting. And I mean in this fact that this is where we thought we should be for a long time. And it's been a long road, and I'm happy for the guys to get this opportunity now, and it's like I said eight years, we feel like we're getting this opportunity. here, and obviously we want to make the most of it.”
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Rod Brind'Amour has that sense of heroism that he passed on to the players. There's an understanding that while the Eastern Conference Finals hurdle is over, the Hurricanes haven't really accomplished anything. No one remembers who finished second. If you're going to lose, why not lose in the first round?
“I don't think we're in yet, you know what I mean?” Rod Brind'Amour added. “Like, you've got to win. So I know everybody makes a big deal about getting to this level, but nobody's going to remember who comes in second. If you're going to lose, you might lose in the first round. Like, it doesn't really make a difference to me. It's all about winning. So we haven't done that. So, it's a tough question for me to ask that question, like I said the plan is that we're really successful. Now, that's a big one, ask me in a few weeks.
This is the mindset of a winner, like the one Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan had. It's all well and good that the Hurricanes made it past Round 3, but only one team wins the Stanley Cup, as Brian Burke famously said. The Hurricanes have a tough opponent in the Vegas Golden Knights, who, from the start, had the sense that a win was important.
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Golden Knights GM Kelly McCrimmon said, “I'm in the winning business, not the hockey business.” You are right. The Golden Knights were told by their owner, Bill Foley, to win. They had goals, and they wanted to achieve them. Carolina had those same goals, but this is their first chance in the Brind'Amour era to play for hockey's biggest prize.
Knowing that the job isn't done will keep Brind'Amour players hungry and focused on the challenge at hand. While it's great to get to the Stanley Cup Final and be grateful for the opportunity to play for the big prize, there's a lot of work to be done for the Carolina Hurricanes.
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