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Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind'Amour
Credit: Josh Lavallee/NHLI via Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind'Amour is a champion once again
- Brind'Amour won the Stanley Cup as a player with the team in 2006 and as a coach on Sunday, June 14
- The coach gleefully took off his shirt and hoisted the trophy over his head
Two decades later, Rod Brind’Amour is raising the Stanley Cup again!
The Carolina Hurricanes head coach celebrated on Sunday, June 14 as the team defeated the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final.
In video from the locker room celebration, the raucous Hurricanes rallied around the coach as he doffed his white button-down shirt, bared his chest and hoisted the trophy over his head.
The pose is similar to the one Brind’Amour sported exactly 20 years earlier when he was a member of the team that beat the Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup Final in 2006.
With the win, Brind’Amour made NHL history, becoming the fourth person to win the Stanley Cup as a captain and a coach with the same team, according to The Athletic.
“It’s still awesome, it’s just as awesome,” Brind’Amour, 55, said at his postgame news conference. “But as a player it was a little different, because I had dreamt of winning the Cup my whole life so that was like a piano had come off my back. This time around, I wanted it for the group. I wanted them to feel what it’s like. I wanted it so bad for them.”
Hurricanes players returned the sentiment after winning the title.
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Rod Brind'Amour
Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty
“I was the first guy to give him a hug,” left winger Jordan Martinook told reporters. “He’s been in my corner since I got here. He’s the reason I’ve stuck around as long as I have. There’s times I didn’t know if I was going to stay and then he gets on the phone and tells me, ‘You can’t leave.’ I couldn’t imagine not being on this team. And the fact we got it done, he’s the best coach I’ve ever had. I’m so happy for him.”
Brind’Amour was hired as the Hurricanes’ head coach in 2018 after serving as an assistant since 2011. In his first season as head coach, Brind’Amour led the team to the Eastern Conference finals where they were swept by the Boston Bruins.
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For the coach, winning the championship this time was memorable for a different reason.
“To watch them finally get it, and when I was grabbing [the Cup], just to see the look on their faces, it’s priceless, because you knew how happy they were for me,” he said. “It was the other way around for me. I’ll never forget that.”
Read the original article on People
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