Peter Laviolette and Rod Brind’Amour will take their places respectively behind the benches of the Rangers and the Hurricanes for the first game of the second round of the 2024 playoffs on Sunday, 17 years, 10 months and 16 days after having won a Stanley Cup together. coach and captain in Raleigh, North Carolina
So much has happened since the two men reached Mount Everest together.
Brind’Amour hung up his skates in 2010 and began playing as an assistant for the Canes the following year before taking the reins in 2018.
Laviolette then coached four other teams, leading two of them to the finals.
What didn’t happen? Neither won another Stanley Cup.
Thus, the former stalwarts of the Hurricanes’ unique championship now find themselves as adversaries on opposing benches, seeking to prevent each other from achieving the ultimate goal they once set out to achieve together and qu ‘they finally reached.
“I think he decided (to make me captain), and it wasn’t a slam dunk,” Brind’Amour told the Post on the outskirts of the NHL draft in Nashville last offseason, a little over two weeks after Laviolette was selected. hired to take over behind the Rangers bench.
“I should blame him. I remember, he didn’t know our team very well because he had just been there for a little while. Then we had a gap year (for the 2004 lockout). You’d have to ask him, but I know, he might say, “Oh, that was…”, he wasn’t sure.
Laviolette and Brind’Amour are only the second head coaching duo in NHL history to face off in a playoff series after previously winning a Cup together as a captain-coach duo, joining Dick Irvin and Hap Day, who together lifted the Lord Stanley Cup. with the Maple Leafs before meeting in three different playoffs as contending coaches.
It’s been 77 years since the last time this happened, with Irvin and Day facing off in the 1947 Stanley Cup final between Montreal and Toronto.
The immense mutual respect between Laviolette and Brind’Amour is evident as they both prepare for the series ahead, but that’s the effect a bond cemented by a long-sought victory can have.
“He clearly did a good job,” Laviolette said of Brind’Amour earlier this week. “He moved his team in the right direction year after year. One of the best teams in the league, chasing what the remaining eight teams will chase. there is no doubt. Not being inside and not actually working with them, you can just tell his teams are playing the right way. They play hard.
Both coaches are known for being detail-oriented, highly motivating and focused on team camaraderie.
The latter is something Brind’Amour said he learned from Laviolette, who always allowed families to come to the rink and promoted a family-friendly environment during his time in Carolina.
It’s a trait that Laviolette seems to have brought everywhere he’s gone during his NHL coaching career, one that hasn’t faded despite how far and how long it may have been since he is part of a team.
When Brind’Amour’s father died last June, Laviolette immediately reached out.
Brind’Amour, 53, considers Laviolette the first coach he had to go the extra mile. You could say that Brind’Amour’s experiences playing for Laviolette partly made him the coach he is today.
“I think there was a lot of confidence,” Brind’Amour said of how the Stanley Cup-winning Hurricanes team took shape under Laviolette. “He inspires a lot of confidence in the players and their abilities as a group. That’s why I think he’s successful, really, wherever he goes. At the start he has a really good boost, the teams are doing really well, because it’s refreshing. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but it has a good way of bringing the band together.
The Rangers were one of the best-coached teams in the NHL this season, winning the Presidents’ Trophy and advancing to the first round in Laviolette’s first year.
The Hurricanes, meanwhile, qualified for the playoffs in all six seasons under Brind’Amour.
From colleagues to competitors, let the battle of the coaches begin.
New York Post
