Hurricanes coach Brind’Amour tricked players into unknowingly practicing Stanley Cup lifts during workouts
After the Carolina Hurricanes captured their second Stanley Cup championship in franchise history with a 3-0 Game 6 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday night, a suddenly unburdened group of players was finally free to share the full details of the preparation that went in to making this run.
After the game, Sebastian Aho revealed to multiple reporters, including Sportsnet’s Gene Principe, that head coach Rod Brind’Amour had players covertly rehearsing raising the Stanley Cup by adding one rep of lifting a cinder block that weighed roughly 35 pounds to their offseason workout program.
Sebastian Aho told a story post game at the end of each workout they would lift a brick(if I heard him correctly)over their heads. The @Canes found out before the final from head coach Rod BrindA'mour the brick weighed as much as @StanleyCup.
Arguably the NHL’s best coach in terms of building a culture, getting the entire locker room to buy in and fight for each other, it should come as no surprise that Brind’Amour put this level of thought into something so seemingly minor that carried a much deeper meaning.
The practice was even included in one of the Hurricanes’ in-season documentary style videos, where head strength and conditioning coach Bill Burniston voiced over a clip of a player performing the exercise.
“We call that our blue collar press,” Burniston said. “I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. Maybe one of the most important blue collar jobs is the mason. The mason builds the foundation of buildings, your homes and what have you. And basically what we ask guys to do is one press and think of those blue collar moments that got them here, and somebody that’s helped you get here.”
Rod sneakily built in a 35 pound cinderblock lift into the Canes offseason workouts, called it “Blue Collar Presses”, and the boys never thought anything of it… Turns out he was having them practice lifting the Cup all season long 🤯🔥 (via @Canes)
The Hurricanes had come quite close to breaking through in many of Brind’Amour’s eight prior years as the team’s head coach, falling in three Eastern Conference Finals and winning at least one round in all eight postseasons.
The man who captained Carolina to its first Stanley Cup in 2006 was able to instill his work ethic into a lineup rife with talented players who believed in his vision, bought in and rehearsed the physical exertion necessary for every step of the journey to being Stanley Cup champions— even the very last one.