MONTREAL — For the majority of players on the Carolina Hurricanes’ roster, Friday’s Game 5 will be the biggest moment of their lives.Their coach has preached the same message in his eight seasons behind the bench: Win the day and success will follow. Rod Brind’Amour isn’t concerned that the magnitude of the moment — the chance to silence their critics and reach the Stanley Cup Final — will be a roadblock to his team giving itself a chance to move on.“I think you can’t look at the big picture, and I think we’ve done a really nice job of focusing in on what’s important, which is now going to be tomorrow,” Brind’Amour said Thursday at the team hotel, one day after Carolina put on a clinical performance in a 4-0 Game 4 win that has them one win from eliminating the Canadiens and moving on to face the Vegas Golden Knights. “Going about figuring out how to win that day. I think that’s sort of the businesslike approach: Show up, do your job and then worry about the next day.”Carolina has evolved and changed as it has added more talent to its roster, but the message has remained the same: Put in the work and be rewarded.And right now, the Hurricanes are firing on all cylinders — so much so that captain Jordan Staal even referred to the team as if it were some kind of hockey T-1000.“We’ve called it the machine before,” Staal said Thursday, his thick playoff beard, to his surprise, free of rust … er, grays. “And we’ve just kept it running, and it didn’t stop.”And a machine can’t worry about what tomorrow will bring. It’s just concerned with the task at hand.“We’ve done a nice job of not getting ahead of ourselves and just focusing on, ‘OK, we’ve got business to take care of,'” Brind’Amour said. “That’s what we still have to do here.”The Hurricanes have, to put it lightly, overwhelmed the young Canadiens the past three games.After a dismal Game 1 performance that saw too-rested Carolina bumble its way to a 6-2 loss, the team’s first loss of the postseason, the past three games have been a lesson in efficiency and effectiveness.
Inside the Hurricanes’ ‘machine’: The approach that’s fueling Carolina’s playoff success
Carolina will try to stay in its groove and keep its machine running by closing out Montreal in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final.












