When Rod Brind’Amour was a player, he underestimated the job of the coach.

“And then I got behind [the bench] and I realized ‘uh oh this is a lot of work,’” said Brind’Amour ahead of the Stanley Cup Final series. “There’s a huge difference there, the time commitment and everything, it’s doubled.”

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.

“I had to pick one guy, he coached me, I’ve taken a lot of the things that he did and that I feel like worked,” said Brind’Amour. “He’s been the biggest influence on me.”

Mackenzie, a former Canadian Olympic hockey player, was coach and principal of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Saskatchewan, Canada while Brind’Amour was a student there.

With Mackenzie as coach, Brind’Amour as captain, and future NHL great Curtis Joseph in net, the Notre Dame Varsity Hounds won the 1988 Centennial Cup – the Canadian Junior A Championship.

“You could tell right from the very start that [Rod] was committed to doing well and focused,” said Mackenzie during a phone call with WRAL News ahead of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.

“He 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,” said Mackenzie.

In 1987, Mackenzie named Brind’Amour the Varsity Hounds’ Most Valuable Player.

“The 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,” said Mackenzie.

And nearly four decades later, Mackenzie is still watching his MVP with intensity and pride.

When asked what Brind’Amour needs to do during Game 4, Mackenzie said he needs to “coach his team the same way that he played.”

“He’s 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’s what he would expect and get from his team [in Game 4] and the rest of the series, really,” said Mackenzie.