Brind'Amour's NHL roots first sprouted in Montreal at 1988 Draft

MONTREAL -- At some point during the Eastern Conference Final, Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour is almost certain to take a glance at the ceiling of Bell Centre.

In the arena rafters hang 24 Montreal Canadiens Stanley Cup championship banners and those of 15 retired numbers, having been worn with Hall of Fame distinction by 18 players.

Of course, Brind’Amour’s attention will be sharply focused on the task at hand -- guiding his Hurricanes past the Canadiens into the Stanley Cup Final.

But even a very small part of the Carolina coach will reflect on the city in which his NHL life began, selected by the St. Louis Blues with the No. 9 pick in the 1988 NHL Draft at the Montreal Forum.

Carolina Hurricanes captain Rod Brind’Amour jumps onto Bell Centre ice before his team’s game against the Canadiens on Oct. 13, 2007, some of Montreal’s championship banners overhead.

Fifteen months ago, Brind’Amour shuffled out of the Hurricanes’ Bell Centre dressing room following a practice the day before a game -- a 4-0 loss to Montreal, as it turned out -- and happily discussed his affection for one of the world’s great hockey cities. He was five days beyond arthroscopic surgery on his right knee, apologizing for his late arrival following a date with an ice pack in his team’s training room.

Brind’Amour played like a destroyer during his Hall of Fame-bound career; now he was moving a bit like a battleship gingerly heading to dry dock for a few repairs.

"I don't know, I'm just getting old," he said with a tight grin, uncertain how he'd injured the joint. "A little meniscus. It is what it is. That was my first time on the ice since the operation. It wasn't great, but I'm just standing out there, it's not like I'm skating. That's the one thing about being a coach, you don't really have to do anything on the ice."

From memory, Brind’Amour did a quick inventory of his surgeries, not that it was a definitive list.

Rod Brind'Amour tries on a St. Louis Blues cap for GM Ron Caron at the Montreal Forum at the NHL Draft on June 11, 1988. Brind’Amour was the ninth overall selection in the draft.

"Too many," he joked. "Three on the left knee, one on the right, hand, wrist, nose … seven or eight. I've got some screws in here."

Some 30 rink lengths away was the Forum, since March 1996 closed to hockey and by now a pale shadow of its legendary former self; in “retirement,” the building is home to a junior college campus, movie theatre, amusement arcade and some retail stores, reminders of the Canadiens on site only if you go looking for them.

“I remember walking into the Forum as a kid and feeling it,” Brind’Amour said of the arena’s incomparable energy. “It was unbelievable. I'd been to Montreal as a 15-year-old, for a tournament that I watched. It was surreal.

“I remember as a kid watching the three stars on 'Hockey Night in Canada.' You always stayed for that, seeing the players take a lap. That's a good memory.

Carolina’s Rod Brind'Amour skates against Richard Zednik of the Canadiens during Game 4 of the First Round of the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Bell Centre in Montreal.

"My idol growing up was Guy Lafleur. To know of the whole Forum thing … then to experience it? This (Bell Centre) building is nice, but it's not the Forum and you can't really explain that to your players.”

Brind'Amour's connection to Lafleur, who died on April 22, 2022 following a battle with cancer, is among his most cherished memories. The coach's parents were from Buckingham, Quebec, about 10 miles from Lafleur's birthplace of Thurso, their son born in Ottawa and still a baby when the family moved to British Columbia.

He vividly recalls a pinch-me moment when, with the Blues, he lined up across from Lafleur, then with the Quebec Nordiques, at Le Colisee in Quebec City.

"That's still one of my best memories," he said. "I was in Guy's fan club as a kid. Here we were lined up at center ice and he was standing beside me. It was surreal. I got his stick after the game, signed. I still have it. That was pretty cool."

Rod Brind'Amour kisses the Stanley Cup after the Carolina Hurricanes defeated the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of the 2006 NHL Stanley Cup Final on June 19, 2006 at RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. At right, Brind’Amour with the 2006-07 Frank J. Selke Trophy that he was voted as the NHL’s outstanding defensive forward.

In 20 NHL seasons from 1989-2010 for the Blues, Philadelphia Flyers and finally the Hurricanes, the rugged two-way center had 1,184 points (452 goals, 732 assists), with another 111 (51 goals, 60 assists) coming in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He captained the Hurricanes to their 2006 Stanley Cup win and twice, in consecutive years, won the Selke Trophy voted as the NHL's best defensive forward (2006, 2007).

With the Hurricanes, he enjoyed good success against the Canadiens, with 22 points (six goals, 16 assists) in 38 regular-season games and 13 points (six goals, seven assists) in 12 playoff games.

Brind'Amour played 13 regular-season games at the Forum before its 1996 closing, 25 more at Molson/Bell Centre. He skated six games against Montreal in both the 2002 and 2006 playoffs and had six points (four goals, two assists) in the 2006 Eastern Conference First Round win that set the Hurricanes toward their Stanley Cup victory.

His first of three career hat tricks should have come on Forum ice for the Blues on Nov. 6, 1989, but to suggest he has lost sleep over the one that got away the first time he played in this city, the 14th of his 1,484 regular-season games, might be to exaggerate.

Rod Brind’Amour skates for the St. Louis Blues on Dec. 28, 1989 in Uniondale, New York; and in a 1996 Philadelphia Flyers’ portrait.

"Was I the first star in that game?" Brind'Amour asked, and he most certainly was. "It was such a special day for me to come in here and play.”

For the Blues, he scored the eighth and ninth goals of the 26 he'd have in his rookie season, twice beating Canadiens goalie Brian Hayward before the game was 10 minutes old. Then he had No. 10 on the blade of his blue-shaft Sherwood early in the second and St. Louis on the power-play.

In a flurry, Hayward stopped Blues forward Peter Zezel twice, sprawling out of position after stopping the rebound, but the goalie somehow swatted his stick at the loose puck when Brind'Amour moved in to finish off the attack, shoving it away.

"The puck was laying there, and I poked at it," Brind'Amour muttered to reporters after the 3-3 tie, laughing now at the decades-ago play-by-play. "That was brutal. (Hayward) was down. I should have buried it."

Carolina Hurricanes captain Rod Brind'Amour awaits puck-drop during a game on Feb. 15, 2009 at HSBC Arena in Buffalo.

Twenty years ago last month, on the eve of Game 4 in the Carolina-Montreal 2006 series, Brind’Amour sat in his team’s Bell Centre dressing room and spoke of his fitness, a thing of legend. Closing in on his 36th birthday, he had the most ice time of any player, skating an average of 24:18 per game that regular season.

Brind’Amour had been the first on his team to arrive for midday practice, three hours before they’d hit the ice, for a session of stretching, a cardio ride on the stationary bike, core work, practice, then upper-body strength training.

“I’m not 55,” he joked, the age he is today. “It’s all about how you take care of yourself. It’s what you do to keep in shape. You don’t need an excellent program and you needn’t get too scientific. At the end of the day, it’s ‘Get off your (behind) and do something.’

“Everybody looks for the secret but it’s just hard work. I’ve not found the fountain of youth, but I’m all ears if someone has.”

Rod Brind’Amour of the Philadelphia Flyers in close against Canadiens goalie Andy Moog during a 3-2 Montreal win at Philadelphia’s CoreStates Center on Jan. 29, 1998.

Two decades later, Brind’Amour is laser-focused on the present, but with enough personal history in Montreal to consider a bit of his past.

"I love looking at the history," he said, speaking of the Canadiens’ arena banners. "I did that as a kid in the NHL, thinking that someday you'd love to have a banner like that, but it's also a reminder that these guys are now retired, or they're gone.

"It goes quick, so take every day and try to enjoy it. You're going to be up there if you've had a very, very good career, but it's also a reminder that you're done."

Top photo: Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour speaks with players during a break in his team’s March 31, 2022 game against the Montreal Canadiens in Raleigh, North Carolina.