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RALEIGH http://www.officialpredators.com/authentic-adidas-ryan-hartman-jersey , N.C. (AP) Rod Brind’Amour came to Carolina in 2000 and never left.He worked his way up the Carolina Hurricanes‘ organizational ladder from key trade acquisition to captain of a Stanley Cup-winning team to the front office to assistant coach and, now, head coach. Along the way, he’s become so blended into the fabric of the community that he coached his son’s T-ball team in his spare time without drawing much attention.When he was introduced last month as Bill Peters’ successor, the Ottawa native referred to Raleigh as ”my town.””Obviously, I’ve been here a long time. My wife’s from here, we’ve got our families here,” Brind’Amour said. ”The organization means something to me, and wearing the crest, it’s special, and so I don’t envision myself being in the hockey world with anyone else. That’s kind of what I meant by it.”I bleed Hurricane red,” he added.With the NHL’s free agency period starting Sunday, Brind’Amour and the Hurricanes have something unique to sell – their new coach’s loyalty to the club and the city, and the intimate connection between the team and one of the league’s smallest markets – one that is starving for a winner. Carolina has the NHL’s longest active playoff drought, missing the postseason for nine consecutive years Ryan Johansen Jersey , and has made it only once since Brind’Amour hoisted the Cup in 2006.Brind’Amour, who was traded here 18 years ago by the Philadelphia Flyers in the Keith Primeau deal, holds a rare position among his peers in the coaching fraternity as one of only 20 active coaches in North America’s four major professional sports who played for the team he now coaches.”It’s special, and I think the attraction for me is that I believe in this group. … If we can just add the right pieces, I think we can be competitive,” Brind’Amour said. ”And I’ve been here when it was a great market, and we were good and had the support, so I know we can regain that.”None of those 20 coaches have continuously been with their franchise as long as Brind’Amour. The closest comparison might be Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell, who spent his childhood in that city while his father worked in the team’s front office and has been with the club since 2007. After finishing his playing career in 2011, he moved into the front office and took over as manager in 2015 following Ron Roenicke’s midseason firing.”Growing up here and being a fan of the Brewers, and just living here my whole life, the connection to the organization obviously means a lot,” Counsell said. ”It helps you understand the organization just because you’ve been a part of it and known it for a while. It helps you know the history; it helps you know the people. … I feel a responsibility to baseball in this state and in this city. I take that seriously.”In addition to Brind’Amour, only three other current coaches or managers have won championships while playing for those teams: Los Angeles Lakers coach Luke Walton won two titles as a forward in the 2000s, Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett was a backup quarterback on two Super Bowl-winning teams in the 1990s Viktor Arvidsson Jersey , and Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora was part of that club’s World Series-winning team in 2007.Raleigh’s small-town feel also affords Brind’Amour the chance to be a normal father. In a scene that might be hard to imagine in one of hockey’s pressure-cooker cities, Brind’Amour spent the spring coaching first base as an assistant for his son’s T-ball team in the suburb of Wake Forest.The team’s head coach, Matt Greene, described Brind’Amour as ”an active, involved dad” and said watching him with the young players was like ”watching the magic work.”He was talking to the kids about baseball … (and) the parents are talking about hockey, (with the parents telling him) `I’ve got my son signed up for hockey next spring,”’ Greene said. ”But Rod was talking to the kid, and putting it more on the kids. Not that Rod was the star, but the kid was the star in baseball.”Brind’Amour, the son-in-law of former North Carolina State basketball player and ex-UNC Asheville coach Eddie Biedenbach, connected with the Raleigh community pretty quickly after his 2000 arrival, and he hopes the current players can do the same.”We’re a younger team now, but as they get older … they’re going to see that this is a great place to raise a family,” he said. ”The people here are just friendly, they’re down-to-earth and it’s a comforting type of lifestyle. At the end of the day Robin Lehner Jersey Womens , we all try to be a champion and we want to be a Stanley Cup champion, but there’s other parts of life, too, that are important.”Being a hockey player, being successful, you’ve got to feel good about where you live,” he added. ”We’ve checked that part off. Now we’ve just got to get the hockey part dialed in.”—AP freelance writer Charles Gardner in Milwaukee contributed to this report. SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Ken Hitchcock knows the routine well by now as he begins his tenure as new coach of the Edmonton Oilers. For the fourth time in his long coaching career, Hitchcock has been tasked with taking over a struggling team in the middle of the season.Hitchcock was hired Tuesday as coach of his hometown Oilers after the team fired Todd McLellan with the team languishing in sixth place in the Pacific Division.“It’s not going to change overnight, but we can start taking some steps,” said Hitchcock, who led St. Louis to a first-place finish in 2011-12 after taking over as coach one month into the season. “I told the players today I can take them to a place personally that they can’t get to themselves, but they’ve got to buy into that, and it’s not going to be comfortable at times.”The Oilers have lost six of seven games, getting outscored 27-11 in those losses http://www.officialdevils.com/authentic-adidas-cory-schneider-jersey , in a rough start to McLellan’s fourth season behind the bench. The team missed the playoffs in two of his previous three seasons despite having superstar Connor McDavid on its roster and the Oilers were just 9-10-1 entering their game Tuesday night at San Jose.“It’s tough to pinpoint what we need, but we’re all to blame here,” McDavid said. “This obviously isn’t on Todd at all. It’s on us as players. That’s just how the business works sometimes. We got to wake up here.”McLellan is the fourth coach to be fired already this season, following John Stevens in Los Angeles, Joel Quenneville in Chicago and Mike Yeo in St. Louis. The Oilers are ahead of only the Blues and the Kings in the Western Conference standings.“Obviously we’re in a rough patch here,” general manager Peter Chiarelli said. “We’re leading into American Thanksgiving. It’s a bit of a template for making the playoffs. I felt I was seeing some things that I had seen last year after not seeing them for quite a fair bit this year, and these recurring themes, I wanted to nip them in the bud.”The 66-year-old Hitchcock announced his retirement in April after a 22-year coaching career, which included a Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars in 1999. He had two stints in Dallas as well as head coaching stops in Philadelphia (2002-2006), Columbus (2006-2010) and St. Louis (2011-2017).Hitchcock is the third-winningest coach in NHL history with an overall record of 823-506-88-119 (.603 winning percentage). He has guided teams to eight division titles and twice to the best record in the NHL and has an 86-82 playoff record.“It’s definitely going to be tough,” said forward Kyle Brodziak, who played for Hitchcock in St. Louis. “It’s always an adjustment. Guys will have to get used to different styles. Hitch is a hard coach, He’s going to be tough on guys and demand a lot. We have to be ready to produce and face the music for sure.”St. Louis made the playoffs in each of Hitchcock’s five full seasons, reaching the Western Conference finals in 2016. The Blues abruptly fired Hitchcock in February 2017, cutting short what was already going to be his last season in St. Louis. He returned to Dallas with the hope of getting the Stars back to the playoffs but a late-season slump kept them out for the second straight year and the eighth time in 10 seasons.In April Jesper Bratt Jersey Kids , Hitchcock said he was retiring for good but changed his mind when the chance to coach the Oilers came up.He pointed to the chance to coach in his native Edmonton in an organization with many people he has worked with in the past, including with Chiarelli on Team Canada in 2014 as a reason to come back. Hitchcock said he also looks forward to coaching the 21-year-old McDavid, who has won the past two scoring titles.“He’s an awesome player. But he has an awesome responsibility,” Hitchcock said. “It’s not just scoring goals and getting points and stuff like that. He sets the competitive tone of the hockey club. I can really help him. I’ve been through some really good players who learned to adapt and do those things. I can help him along there and get him to understand what his responsibility is because he’s carrying too much of the burden and he needs to lighten the load a little bit.”There is plenty of blame to go around for the lackluster start in Edmonton by a top-heavy roster led by McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Chiarelli traded winger Taylor Hall to New Jersey for defenseman Adam Larsson in June 2016, and then signed forward Milan Lucic to a seven-year, $42 million contract a few days later. Hall won the Hart Trophy as league MVP last season, while Lucic has two goals in his last 66 games.Hitchcock becomes the seventh coach for the Oilers since the team fired Craig McTavish at the end of the 2008-09 season, following Pat Quinn, Tom Renney, Ralph Krueger, Dallas Eakins, Todd Nelson and McLellan.“He’s always had very good defensive teams,” Lucic said of Hitchcock. “We need to come together as a group no matter who the coach is.”