Hurricanes' drive to Cup Final paved by buying in to Brind'Amour's system

Taylor Hall never liked to play against the Carolina Hurricanes. 

“I don't know what my career stats were against the Hurricanes, but they had to have been some of the worst,” Hall said this week.  

Well, maybe not the worst, but for a former No. 1 pick in the NHL Draft, a Hart Trophy winner voted as the NHL most valuable player and a forward who has put up 787 points (302 goals, 485 assists) in 989 regular-season games, 16 points (four goals, 12 assists) in 24 career games against Carolina is not great. 

“So it’s nice to be on the other side,” Hall said.

Nice yes, but it’s certainly not easy. 

You see, to play for the Hurricanes takes a total buy-in into the system of coach Rod Brind’Amour, one that requires the ability to forecheck at the highest level, hit the opponent every chance you get, block shots and patiently wait for scoring chances.

Call it the Carolina Way or 60 Minutes of Hell, call it whatever you want, but to call it anything but a success would be wrong.

That style has made the Hurricanes a perennial Stanley Cup contender and this season has them four wins from winning hockey’s ultimate prize. It’s allowed them to roll through the first three rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, going 12-1 to reach the Stanley Cup Final against the Vegas Golden Knights, which starts with Game 1 at Lenovo Center in Raleigh on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; (ABC, SN, TVAS, CBC).

And though it’s a system that results in eye-popping defensive and goaltending numbers -- the Hurricanes held the Montreal Canadiens to just five goals and 67 shots on goal in the final four games of the Eastern Conference Final -- it’s not just the Carolina defenseman making it happen. 

“It starts with the forwards,” defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere said during the Eastern Conference Final. “You see the extended shifts they have. Their (Canadiens) D are trying to do everything they can to break the puck out, and you know it’s continually just turnover after turnover, and it’s a momentum builder.

“You see each (line) just setting up the next line, going out and doing more of the same. It’s kind of just sticking a fork in them in a sense that you just keep doing the same thing over and over again.” 

A perfect snapshot of the what the Hurricanes do came in the third period of their 4-0 win in Game 4 of the Conference Final on Wednesday in Montreal. 

Already leading 3-0, the Hurricanes got the puck into the Canadiens zone and kept in there for 1:34, winning seven puck battles, never allowing Montreal to touch the puck, let alone get in out of the zone. 

They didn’t get a goal, but exerted their dominance nonetheless. 

Gostisbehere displayed another key to the system, sacrificing his body to block a shot by Lane Hutson in the first period of Game 4. He not only blocked the shot, the puck went back the other way off of the defenseman’s leg and started a 2-on-1 the that resulted in a Carolina goal. 

Another example of every player on the ice, every player in the lineup, doing what is necessary to win. 

“We’re all pulling on the same side of the rope, we’re all the same players in a sense that we’re going to do whatever we have to do to win,” Gostisbehere said. “You look at (center Sebastian Aho), you look at the skill guys, they’re blocking shots, too.” 

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Though Brind’Amour is the evil genius behind the system, the message to play that way, the only way to play in Carolina, is reinforced by captain Jordan Staal and the leaders on the roster, like Aho and defenseman Jaccob Slavin.  

“It only works if the guys in the room are going to push the message that the coaches are pushing,” Brind’Amour said. “If the leaders are saying maybe there's a better way or a different way, then everything's going to go sideways.

“So that's every day that I've been here, never had that issue, you know? Our leadership group is like, ‘This is how we do it,’ and nothing that you know coming from me. I laid it out, but they have to buy into it.”

Take Seth Jarvis for example. The 24-year-old plays on the Hurricanes’ top line with center Aho, who is nicknamed 'Fish,' and Andrei Svechnikov, but that hasn’t always been the case. Selected by Carolina with the No. 13 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, Jarvis played the 2020-21 season with Chicago of the American Hockey League and Portland of the Western Hockey League.

When he joined Carolina for the start of the following season, he said it didn’t take him long to assimilate into the system, because he had no other choice.

“Roddy proved or showed me that if I wanted to stay on the team, stay in the lineup, that I had to kind of adapt that way pretty quickly,” Jarvis said. “And it wasn't like I started on the first line and all this stuff, I started on the fourth line, and kind of in that role you forecheck hard and you hound pucks, and you create your offense from there. 

"So starting that early in my career, I think helped a lot, just getting used to being hound on pucks and making their defense uncomfortable.”

Jarvis said the system is a controlled chaos. It’s not just forwards and defensemen hitting everything that moves on the ice. It’s knowing when to do it, when not to do it, and what your teammates are doing.

“It's not just skating a million miles an hour and trying to hit somebody," he said, "because there's so many good D-men that'll make you miss, so it's nice to see that our whole lineup does it. 

"And it's not just a few guys, and I think that's what makes it so easy for guys to come in and play that way, is because they see everybody does it, it's not just one or two guys, it's the whole lineup that that makes our team so effective.”

But don’t get him wrong, there is hitting. In the five-game series against Montreal, the Hurricanes registered 175 hits, 69 more than the Canadiens. They also limited Montreal to 189 shot attempts in the five games, while Carolina generated 384 shot attempts. 

“It can be boring sometimes, but obviously we don’t care about that,” Gostisbehere said. “It’s something that we live by in the sense that you make it hard on teams, you make them uncomfortable. So that’s something we live by and we try to do it every day.” 

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Logan Stankoven saw it right away. 

He came to the Hurricanes from the Dallas Stars on March 7, 2025, in a blockbuster trade for forward Mikko Rantanen, who was acquired by the Hurricanes from the Colorado Avalanche less than two months earlier, on Jan. 25. The Hurricanes, unable to sign Rantanen long term, moved him to Dallas for Stankoven and a conditional first-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, a third-round pick in 2026, a third-round pick in the 2027 NHL Draft and a first-round pick in the 2028 NHL Draft.

And though Rantanen is considered a superior offensive force -- he had back-to-back seasons of at least 100 points with Colorado in 2023-24 and 2024-25 -- Stankoven has fit perfectly into the Carolina system. 

He had 44 points (21 goals, 23 assists) in 81 games during the regular season and has turned it up a notch in the postseason with 12 points, including a team-high nine goals.

“I love it every second that I’ve been here," Stankoven said. "It’s so much fun just to play hockey. You’ve got some experienced guys here that have gone deep on deep playoff runs, and they make it so easy just to step in, and Rod and our leadership guys expect guys to come in, and we show up with a smile on our face, but we’re here to work when we step inside the rink. 

“So that’s the main thing is our work ethic, and then if you can stick to the details, success follows.”

Hall said he needed some time to adjust to the system. The No. 1 pick by the Edmonton Oilers in the 2010 NHL Draft, he played 878 regular-season games with the Oilers, New Jersey Devils, Arizona Coyotes, Buffalo Sabres, Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks before arriving in Carolina from Chicago in the trade that brought Rantanen to the Hurricanes.

Now he’s the face of the Hurricanes system, an absolute menace for opposing teams this postseason.

Though he has 16 points (five goals, 11 assists) in 13 games -- including eight points (two goals, six assists) in series-clinching games, his physical presence has been a huge boost.

He has 17 hits in 13 games this postseason and had 19 in 15 games last season. He made life quite uncomfortable for the Canadiens defensemen in the conference final, especially rising star Lane Hutson, who Hall hit several times in the five-game series. 

“I think there's a learning process when you get here on how you have to play and the detail that comes with that,” Hall said. “You know, I think that takes a while. For some guys it's longer than others, but I feel comfortable now, and you know, once you get it down and once you start getting a feel on what the team needs from you, it's a lot of fun to play here.”

That learning process and helping guys get the system down comes from everyone in the organization, from Brind’Amour down to veteran leaders like Staal, Aho and Slavin.

“I'm just very fortunate, just very fortunate, because when you’re with me the whole time, and I talk about Jordan and ‘Slavo’ and ‘Fish,’” Brind’Amour said. “And they just don't allow (not playing that way) to happen. So anyone that comes in new, this is how we do things. I feel like, for better or for worse, whatever, everyone's on the same page.”

Not only is everyone on the same page, everyone is contributing, from the forwards in the top six to the depth forwards, to an all-world defenseman like Slavin all the way down to the depth defensemen.

“It's just a buy-in into our system,” Jarvis said. “It's not just the fourth line doing it, it’s everybody in our system, and that's what we expect, is all lines, all defense to put in an effort defensively to stop their chances.”

Like Hall, Nikolaj Ehlers knew how hard it was to play against the Hurricanes. It’s a big reason the forward joined them as a free agent last July 3 after playing his first 10 NHL seasons with the Winnipeg Jets.

“I played against this team for my whole career," Ehlers said, "and obviously these past many years this team has been a really good team, a really hard team to play against. They play the same way every single shift, and they just lay it on you. I didn't want to be on the other side anymore.”