"I don't think as an assistant I'm going to get any better or learn any more. So now's the time. … They're going to find the best guy to do it and if it's me, that's great -- and if not, I understand. But I felt like I could at least step up and see if it could happen."
The Hurricanes have a coaching vacancy after Bill Peters resigned Friday. He went 137-138-53, and Carolina failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in each of his four seasons. The Hurricanes were 36-35-11 this season, 14 points behind the New Jersey Devils for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference. The Hurricanes have not made the playoffs since 2009.
Brind'Amour, 47, was captain of the Hurricanes when they won the Stanley Cup in 2006. He has been an assistant since the 2011-12 season.
"He's a good coach and I learned a lot from him," Brind'Amour said of Peters. "What he was thinking, I don't know because we never talked about it. But I just know he was very competitive and maybe he felt the way we were set up we weren't competitive enough. But that's me speculating."
Tom Dundon took over as majority owner of the Hurricanes on Jan. 11 and reassigned former general manager Ron Francis, who remains with the organization as president of hockey operations. Carolina does not have a GM.
"It's been refreshing for me," Brind'Amour said of the ownership change. "He's put himself in the fire too, and I like that. He's trying to do it all, but I don't think he's going into it saying, 'This is the way it's going to be.' He's asking a lot of questions from everybody in the organization. He's certainly passionate about what he's doing, so I give him a lot of credit for that and I like that.
"You get the feeling we're either going to kill it or we're going to get killed. To be honest, I like taking that chance. Obviously, we've been mired in, whatever the word is, mediocrity or whatever, but I think everybody would like to see us in one place or the other but not stuck in the middle. Tom wants to know what's going on at every level and improve it at every level."
