The NHL already trimmed its preseason this year. Rod Brind’Amour would like it removed altogether.
The league’s new collective bargaining agreement, which took effect on September 16, expanded the regular season from 82 games to 84 while cutting the preseason from six games per team to a maximum of four. Training camp was shortened from 20 days to 13, and any player with at least 100 NHL games can now appear in only two exhibition games. The result is an eight-day, 65-game preseason, the shortest in more than a decade.
Rod Brind’Amour on preseason
Appearing on TSN’s OverDrive on Monday, the Carolina Hurricanes head coach was asked how he’s managing the compressed schedule, and his answer went two games further than the league dared.
“I’d say go to 86 games and 0 preseason. Why waste games on the fans that don’t count? Let’s play for real,” Brind’Amour said.
The comment was partly tongue-in-cheek, but it fits how Carolina is approaching this fall. The Hurricanes have made clear they’re more interested in having their core physically ready for opening night than in winning exhibition games, which is a reasonable position for a team coming off a championship.
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Brind’Amour has earned the right to an opinion on the subject. He took over as head coach in 2018 after inheriting a franchise that had missed the playoffs nine straight seasons, went 46-29-7 in his first year and reached the Eastern Conference Final, and has qualified for the postseason in every season since. He won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 2020-21, and last spring he finally got the one thing missing, beating the Vegas Golden Knights in six games to win the Stanley Cup.
That victory made him just the fourth person in NHL history to captain and later coach the same franchise to a title, having lifted the Cup as Carolina’s captain in 2006.
The Hurricanes open their title defense on September 29.
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