Rod Brind’Amour is made for the playoffs. The Carolina Hurricanes coach made his NHL debut in the postseason in 1989. filling in for the St Louis Blues in a game against the Minnesota North Stars. He scored on his first shot. Still. it took him 17 seasons in the NHL before he hoisted the Stanley Cup in 2006 as captain of the Carolina Hurricanes, the team he has now led to another Cup win as head coach. “The fear of losing motivates you a lot of times,” he told reporters after that 2006 Cup win.
Wherever the motivation came from this year, the result is the same. The Hurricanes beat the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 in Game 6 on Sunday to win the Stanley Cup for the second time in franchise history. exactly 20 years since they did it last.
Back in 2006. the Hurricanes were a semi-surprise entrant into the Final, having failed to qualify for the playoffs in each of the two seasons preceding the 2004-05 lockout (their prior trip to the postseason, in 2001-02, took them to the Final, which they lost to Detroit in five games). The history of the 2026 Hurricanes was different. Carolina’s Metropolitan division is a weird one, with the teams’ geographic proximity typically reflected in the tight standings. Season to season it’s difficult to predict exactly who will make the postseason (other than maybe Columbus). It’s a knife fight every time.
Except for the Hurricanes. In recent years, they’ve floated above the gyre. simultaneously drawn skepticism about whether they are actually any good, or just good versus the Metro. It was an earned reputation, as they lost in the Eastern finals in 2019, 2023, and 2025. The Hurricanes seemed to have enough gas to dominate the Metro. squeeze through a couple of postseason rounds, but that was where it always ended. What made 2026 different was then maybe not the fear of losing – how could they be? Part of what changed for the 2026 Hurricanes was a decision one of the Vegas Golden Knights made in the spring of 2025.
It’s weird to call Mitch Marner a breakout star of the playoffs since he’s been in the NHL for a decade,. that is essentially what he was. In this, his first season with Vegas, Marner posted 10 goals and 19 assists in the playoffs. His next closest total playoff point tally was 14 in 2023 when the Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Florida Panthers in the second round. Last spring, the Leafs offered to trade Marner to Carolina, but he declined. Missing out on Marner, Carolina pivoted and sent Mikko Rantanen to Dallas for Logan Stankoven. In the process, Carolina banked picks and cap space and ultimately secured Nikolaj Ehlers from Winnipeg. As good as Marner was for Vegas, he didn’t quite outdo Stankoven. Ehlers, who combined for 15 and 17 points respectively, giving Carolina more offensive depth than they had before. On Sunday night in Vegas, Stankoven’s line gave Carolina the 2-0 lead and the insurance they ultimately needed to win.
But. the Hurricanes of all teams might be taken seriously at all by someone like Marner – an offensive talent with options – would have been a surprise to most people who saw the team land in Raleigh in 1997. One of the few remaining World Hockey Association franchises, the Hartford Whalers left Connecticut in 1997 after plummeting revenues. a dispute with the local government over a stadium (a familiar NHL tale). As with other moves to infiltrate the Southern US markets, many saw the relocation as a major gamble, made riskier by the fact that North Carolina’s affinity for college basketball all. ruled out, it was assumed, much room for too many other sports.
Sure enough. when the Hurricanes hit the ice in North Carolina, it was to a half-empty Greensboro Coliseum, which was a 90-minute drive from Raleigh, making the Hurricanes first season “one long, strange 82-game road trip,” as Sports Illustrated put it at the time. The Hurricanes “are like some down-on-its-luck country band playing in front of small crowds, in a small city, with no home. no hope.” The team’s name was the only thing about it that made sense, the magazine continued, “because thus far the NHL’s incursion into tobacco country has been a natural disaster.”
Brind’Amour changed that. The Hurricanes had been looking at Brind’Amour for a while – his name was floated as early as October 1997 as a possible trade for goalie Sean Burke. even as he had another two-and-a-half years in Philadelphia as a Flyer. Brind’Amour’s first few months with the Hurricanes were rocky, but he gradually became a fit. And post-lockout, he brought a renewed sense of purpose to his game. “I’ve been fortunate, so I’ve never taken a day for granted in this league,” Brind’Amour said back in 2006. At 35, he likely knew then that the window to win a Cup was closing, compounded by the lockout. “That has been the approach I’ve always had … We’re pretty fortunate to play this game for a living. we all know the importance of it.”
This year, it was captain Jordan Staal who hoisted the Cup first for the Hurricanes. Staal, 37, has been with the organization since 2012. his relationship with Brind’Amour is credited as key to Carolina’s ongoing success. Staal had the best postseason of his career this spring, notching eight goals. four assists – good enough to earn him the Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP. In a post-game interview, Staal coincidentally [or maybe not] echoed Brind’Amour’s sentiment from 20 years ago. “Good time to get hot, eh?” he said when asked to explain how to account for his playoff performance. “I just wanted to win. I just wanted to win so bad.”
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