Rod Brind'Amour, the head coach and former captain of the Carolina Hurricanes, won his second Stanley Cup on June 15. He guided Carolina to a 3-0 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 6 of the Final. This put an end a 20-year championship drought for the franchise.

After the game, the 55-year-old opened up about the doubts that rose over time about winning.

"Well, you always had doubts. I mean, it creeps in. It creeps in all the time. And especially, I felt like this team could have done this many, many times. Something would just go off the rails a little,” he says.

Carolina had come really close before, too. Under the coaching of Brind'Amour, Despite advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals three times between 2019 and 2025, they fell short each time, including a brutal five-game exit against the Florida Panthers in 2025.

“I always thought it was the injuries. We were just missing key pieces, and you can't win when you get to the end if the key pieces are out. It's just too hard. We were fortunate this year that that didn't really happen. So that's a big deal,” he added explaining more.

In 2026, Carolina finally managed to finish with 16-3 in the playoffs, marking the second-best postseason period since the league had moved to four best-of-7 rounds in 1987.

Brind'Amour later said, "We've built something real special, and it's been there for a long time. It just never quite was able to crack through, and then finally we did here."

Now Brind'Amour's relationship with the Stanley Cup is extending up to two decades in two different roles.

Brind'Amour is Joining an Exclusive Stanley Cup List

He first lifted the cup in 2006 as Carolina's captain when the Hurricanes went on to defeat the Edmonton Oilers in seven games. But now, twenty years later, he lifted it again as the coach of the team. 

He spent more than 20 years in the NHL as a player, developer, assistant, and finally head coach. And with this, the 2026 championship, he became the fourth man in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup with the same franchise as both captain and head coach.

He stands right below Toe Blake of the Montreal Canadiens, Hap Day of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Cooney Weiland of the Boston Bruins in the list of  Hockey Hall of Famers 

As a player, he was the core of the team that helped it win its first championship. Now, as a coach, he helped the Hurricanes remain as strong contenders for long enough until they claimed the second one. 

Read more at NHL Fan Central!

Written by

Aadhya Nalla

Edited by

Kaamna Dwivedi