By Pierre LeBrun (The Athletic)
LAS VEGAS — Jordan Martinook sought out someone in particular as the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup celebrations began.
“I was the first guy to give him a hug,” Martinook said as his teammates and family rejoiced all over the T-Mobile Arena ice surface Sunday night. “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.”
Toe Blake with Montreal, Hap Day with Toronto and Cooney Weiland with Boston are the only other people in NHL history to both captain and coach the same organization to a Stanley Cup.
Welcome to that elite club, Rod Brind’Amour.
“It’s still awesome, it’s just as awesome,” Brind’Amour said at his postgame news conference, a Stanley Cup champions scarf draped around his neck. “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.
“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. It was the other way around for me. I’ll never forget that.”
To a player, the Hurricanes all credit one person especially for their Stanley Cup dreams coming true Sunday night after a 3-0 win in Game 6 ended the series with the Vegas Golden Knights.
“I can’t say enough,” Carolina winger Seth Jarvis, tears of joy filling his eyes during the celebrations, said of his head coach. “He’s lived it as a player, he’s been through it, he’s lifted it, and now to lift it as a coach, we have the utmost respect for him. Everything he says goes. He’s a big reason why we won.”
That compiled knowledge as a star player, as a captain, and then as a coach — it’s all built up to how Brind’Amour approaches his craft today.
“He’s played before, so he understands the feel of a team and looking across the room and looking in everyone’s eyes and understanding that they need to bring it, and you need to bring it for them,” said Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal. “He understands that. The motivation to run through a wall for him is there.”
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