Rod Brind’Amour and the Carolina Hurricanes are one win away from advancing to their fourth NHL Eastern Conference final in eight years.
The Canes took a 3-0 second-round series lead Thursday after a 4-1 road win over the Philadelphia Flyers – one of the teams Brind’Amour skated for during his National Hockey League days.
Brind’Amour also played two seasons of under-18 AAA puck and one at the junior A level from 1985-88 with the Notre Dame Hounds program in Wilcox. While there, he scored 14 points in five games at the 1988 Centennial Cup to help the Hounds to the national junior A championship.
All he did from there was go on to an NHL career that spanned 1,484 games as a player and included a Stanley Cup win as Carolina’s captain in 2006.
“It was kind of the first chapter of figuring out how to win for me, and it really prepared me for the rest of my career in college and in the NHL, just how hard you have to work to win,” Brind’Amour said of the Centennial Cup win, in a history of the Hounds that appeared in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s 50th anniversary book The Heart and Soul of the SJHL.
Also serving on Carolina’s staff this year is amateur scout and Saskatoon product Cody Nickolet, who spent time scouting for his hometown Blades in the Western Hockey League before joining the pro ranks with the Hurricanes in 2019-20.
Game 4 between Carolina and Philadelphia is scheduled for Saturday.
