First, let me point out a couple other good stopping points today as people celebrate Rod Brind’Amour’s great career leading up to Rod Brind’Amour night in Raleigh.
--For a perspective of Brind’Amour’s great years in Philadelphia please take a look at great Flyers' perspective provided here at HockeyBuzz in Bill Meltzer’s and Tim Panaccio's blogs.
--Canes Country is also a good source for all things Canes and will certainly have up a Brind’Amour blog today. (www.canescountry.com)
--The News & Observer ( www.newsobserver.com/sports/nhl/canes/ ) also has up a couple good Brind’Amour articles today.

In writing my small tribute to Rod Brind’Amour, I will not bother with any of his impressive career statistics. You can find those statistics elsewhere. Statistics fail to tell the story of what Rod Brind’Amour means anyway. And I will not dwell on his season captaining the Stanley Cup winning Carolina Hurricanes in 2006. Many of us were there and those who not have heard the stories countless times.

Instead I am going to simply tell 3 short stories that I think epitomize who Rod Brind’Amour is as a Carolina Hurricane and great leader in the franchise’s short but proud history in Raleigh, North Carolina:

1) Brind’Amour’s work ethic and fitness level are no secret. If you were going to build an all-time fitness team for the NHL, he could very well captain such a team. He was a bag skate for a living leader during the Canes informal, unofficial workouts at the tail end of summer and during conditioning drills during training camp long before he became captain of the team. Early in training camp in the fall of 2005, the team was going through the usual array of draining skating drills still with the large group of nearly 40 guys many of whom were no name kids many unlikely to ever see the NHL. One such kid was Chad Larose. He was an undrafted, unknown who was nowhere to be found on any kind of “expected to make the team” depth chart. But he was a small fast guy with the speed to push Rod Brind’Amour. At one point during the conditioning skating, Larose was doing a good job keeping up with Brind’Amour and might have even been paying the veteran a little respect by not actually besting him. At this point, Brind’Amour told Larose that he should be beating him.

The story is a small non-dramatic minute during training camp, but it is 1 of countless examples of 2 important traits of Rod Brind’Amour the leader:

First, Rod Brind’Amour treated everyone the same. He was never one of those veterans living in his own bubble going through the motions in training camp waiting for the extra bodies to go back to the minors or juniors and for the season to start.

Second, while he does have a huge amount of drive to be the best, his ego was not above the team. Quite the opposite, Rod Brind’Amour used his commitment to preparation not as a way to put himself above others but rather as a quiet way to push everyone to work hard to get better. It is kind of hard to leave the arena at 1pm when you have to walk past Rod Brind’Amour who is only a half hour deep into an arduous post-practice workout that will last another hour and a half.

2) I do not recall the game or even the year, but 1 specific play I remember vividly embodies Rod Brind’Amour’s intensity and willingness to sacrifice on the ice. The scene was overtime in regular season game. The puck had been in the offensive zone long enough that all 8 players were in the zone when a Canes defenseman shot a puck off an opposing forward’s skate and straight up into the air between the 2 faceoff circles about scoreboard high such that everyone on the ice had time to get to it. While most players sort of jostled for position as the puck was coming down, #17 skated straight to the middle of the fray and leapt into the air to grab the puck. He managed to get the puck with 1 hand and get just clobbered simultaneously by 2 opposing players. The first hit shot his helmet off his head and about 15 feet 1 direction and the other hit that came milliseconds wrenched his body the other way. Despite a chiropractor quality hit and a spiraling helmet, Brind’Amour remained focused on the puck, grabbed it and managed to put it down and try to get a shot off from 1 knee as he went to the ground. When he went to the bench after the shift, he looked a little dazed but more upset that his shift did not win the game.

Again, a small insignificant play in the big picture of his career, but a perfect signature one that showed how Rod Brind’Amour played the game, how he sacrificed everything to win games.

3) If they have not blocked it out, Canes fans remember the miserable seasons in 02-03 and 03-04 following a run to the Stanley Cup finals in 2002. Rod Brind’Amour was only a couple years deep in his Canes career after being traded for Keith Primeau a couple years early and suddenly stuck in the middle of a rebuilding project (minus a whole bunch of good young players) in a small, southern hockey market. Seems like a situation you get out of if you can, right? I will not mention names, but during the offseason another Cane near the top of the team’s payroll sort of suggested that he might like to move on to a Stanley Cup contender. This can be a common refrain from veterans who sometimes prefer to just be parachuted into a better situation. At about the same time, I remember an interview with Rod Brind’Amour. He was having exactly none of the “poor me, I hope they trade me to a better team” stuff. He shot back about how he needed to work harder and get better and that everyone else needed to do the same. I recognize that players are trained to say the right thing, but he meant it. After trading Keith Primeau to get him and struggling to lure similar players to the still young market, had there been any vibe at all behind closed doors that Brind’Amour wanted out, GM Jim Rutherford would have had no choice but to trade him to make sure he got a return before he ran off as a free agent.

When things got tough, Rod Brind’Amour was the kind of player that looked at himself first and looked to lead his teammates second. His sole focus in a difficult situation was to make it better; he never considered just bailing out.

So fast forward only a couple years past this low point in Carolina Hurricanes history and simultaneously Rod Brind’Amour’s career and he is hoisting the Stanley Cup as captain of the Carolina Hurricanes.

Great organizations are ALWAYS built around great leaders. Rod Brind’Amour is 1 of a handful of great leaders in building the foundation for the Carolina Hurricanes franchise. My 3 children (and wife) will be there with me tonight to see #17 go to the rafters. I look forward to the day many years from now when I get to tell grandchildren who Rod Brind’Amour was and how he helped build the Carolina Hurricanes franchise to where it is

Thank you to Rod Brind'Amour for everything he did as a Carolina Hurricane.

Go Canes!

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