NHL Players Hate Hurricanes’ Arena;
What Does Rod Brind’Amour Think?
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
In a poll of more than 100 active National Hockey League players published recently by The Athletic, the Carolina Hurricanes were in the headlines for two main reasons.
One was the Hurricanes’ universally respected head coach, Rod Brind’Amour. The other was the franchise’s overwhelmingly disliked visiting-team locker room at their home arena, which is now called the Lenovo Center.
Especially with the poll’s 111 responding players granted anonymity for all of their answers, there was little reason to question the candor of their responses.
While the respondents were incredibly complimentary toward Brind’Amour, who ranked alongside Stanley Cup championship coaches Jon Cooper (Tampa Bay) and Paul Maurice (Florida) in one poll question, they were over-the-top critical toward the Hurricanes’ facilities, including the visiting team’s locker room.
Asked which NHL team has the worst facilities, the players collectively cast far more votes for the Canes than for the league’s other 31 teams combined.
65.7% — Carolina Hurricanes
20% — Calgary Flames
(no other team received more than 1.9%)
At the Lenovo Center (formerly PNC Arena), visiting players are forced to warm up and lift weights or ride the bike after the game in a hallway or a giant storage area. The visiting-team locker room itself, despite a recent renovation that added about two feet of width, might be the most cramped in the league, too.
“It used to be Carolina, but then they upgraded,” one player said. “And somehow it’s still Carolina.”
“The visiting room sucks,” another player said. “And the home room is basically the visiting room with some paint on the walls. So, yeah, pretty s—-y.”
“Terrible,” another Carolina voter said.
“Carolina stinks,” said another.
“It’s brutal,” said another. “It sucks. Everything about that trip sucks.”
“Not even close,” said another.
“Probably ours,” one particularly sneaky Hurricanes player said. “This summer, they’re supposed to change it up a little bit. We’ve been telling them to put it off.”
So, did Brind’Amour ever see or hear about the The Athletic poll, and the Hurricanes’ prominent place in so many players’ responses?
Yes, he did. He attributed his personal popularity mostly to the Hurricanes’ winning ways in recent years. Prior to the hiring of Brind’Amour, the Canes had missed the playoffs for nine consecutive seasons; since his hiring, they have played in the postseason for six (soon to be seven) years in a row.
Regarding so many players’ intense criticism of the Lenovo Center’s visiting locker room, Brind’Amour laughed.
“Well, they have fixed it up a little, because they had to,” Brind’Amour said, smiling. “But for years, it was like we had the worst visiting locker room setup.
“It didn’t bother us. I know Donnie (long-time Canes GM Don Waddell), when he was here, we’d always kinda laugh about it. (Laughs.) And it’s like, that’s a good thing. You want them to be uncomfortable, as a visitor. It’s hard enough to play in our building, with the fans and the atmosphere, and you might as well make it crappy for them to be there at all. I don’t think they put a lot of emphasis on trying to fix it up until they had to.
“But there’s also the other side of it. We want our players to think the whole thing — top to bottom — is done right, and technically we weren’t doing that right.
“But I’m not sure that didn’t help us, in actuality.”
NOTE: For another lengthy, “getting-to-know-you” conversation (from last season) between Brind’Amour and Glenn, who have done dozens of interviews together over the past 25 years, please click HERE. The video of Brind’Amour’s most recent visit with Glenn is below.
