When Rod Brind\u2019Amour was a player, he underestimated the job of the coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I got behind [the bench] and I realized \u2018uh oh this is a lot of work,\u2019\u201d said Brind\u2019Amour ahead of the Stanley Cup Final series. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge difference there, the time commitment and everything, it\u2019s doubled.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the Carolina Hurricanes captain-turned-coach chases his second Stanley Cup with the team, he credits part of his success to his high school hockey coach, Barry Mackenzie.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to pick one guy, he coached me, I\u2019ve taken a lot of the things that he did and that I feel like worked,\u201d said Brind\u2019Amour. \u201cHe\u2019s been the biggest influence on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mackenzie, a former Canadian Olympic hockey player, was coach and principal of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Saskatchewan, Canada while Brind\u2019Amour was a student there.<\/p>\n
With Mackenzie as coach, Brind\u2019Amour as captain, and future NHL great Curtis Joseph in net, the Notre Dame Varsity Hounds won the 1988 Centennial Cup \u2013 the Canadian Junior A Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could tell right from the very start that [Rod] was committed to doing well and focused,\u201d said Mackenzie during a phone call with WRAL News ahead of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had the dream of being in the NHL, he had a dream of being a significant player in the NHL, and he was using Notre Dame as a way of developing the talents to make that contribution when he played and as a coach,\u201d said Mackenzie.<\/p>\n
In 1987, Mackenzie named Brind\u2019Amour the Varsity Hounds\u2019 Most Valuable Player.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe teachers in the residences would say how Rod would get up in the morning and workout. And kind of had a following of people who would work out with him or around him. It kind of became a thing to become as physically fit as you possibly could,\u201d said Mackenzie.<\/p>\n
And nearly four decades later, Mackenzie is still watching his MVP with intensity and pride.<\/p>\n
When asked what Brind\u2019Amour needs to do during Game 4, Mackenzie said he needs to \u201ccoach his team the same way that he played.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s lived a life of commitment, and knowing what he wanted. And the fact that he had to work hard, give 110% every time, and just that he was very focused on what his task was. And I think that that\u2019s what he would expect and get from his team [in Game 4] and the rest of the series, really,\u201d said Mackenzie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Rod Brind\u2019Amour was a player, he underestimated the job of the coach. \u201cAnd then I got behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4821,385,293914,99,23633],"class_list":["post-694535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-nhl","tag-rod-brindamour","tag-sports","tag-stanley-cup-final"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}