Brind'Amour newest Flyers Hall of Famer

Rod Brind'Amour spent parts of nine seasons with the Flyers, including six years with defenseman Chris Therien as his teammate.

Make that his appreciative teammate.

Therien watched Brind'Amour's fanatical devotion to fitness with wide eyes.

"Nobody worked harder," said Therien, now a Flyers broadcaster. "When I think of Roddy Brind'Amour, the first thing I think of is dedication and work. I know he has a lot of accolades - the Stanley Cup, captain of a team - but to me, the work and the professionalism he brought to the rink every day is what stands out. He was committed to helping his team and committed to himself."

That commitment will land Brind'Amour in the Flyers' Hall of Fame on Monday before the Flyers face Carolina at the Wells Fargo Center.

Brind'Amour, now a Hurricanes assistant, was one of the NHL's physical-fitness pioneers, Therien said. He was always in the weight room, always pushing himself.

"This guy just never stopped," Therien said. "It was contagious, and at times guys would laugh about it because he would never stop working. Roddy was all business. I look back and appreciate that we had a guy like that who worked so hard for his team and himself."

Brind'Amour, 45, said his off-ice training started when he was a youngster, "and it just instilled to me as a kid that I wanted to make the NHL, or just to be good at it as a hockey player. I knew I had to do more than the next kid. The one thing I could control was how hard I worked. I just never wanted to leave anything on the table, so I just always found myself kind of finding the hardest-working player and trying to make sure I was working harder than him."

In the Flyers portion of his career, Brind'Amour played mostly center and collected 601 points in 633 games, including a career-high 97 points in 1993-94.

When Eric Lindros arrived in 1992-93, Brind'Amour was in his second season with the Flyers. In a conference call with reporters Saturday, he said Lindros' arrival "kind of transformed our team, as far as now all of a sudden people were watching us, even when we were a pretty young team. Then the pieces just started falling in around it, and we made a couple more good trades."

But they never won a Cup.

"The biggest regret I ever had in playing in Philadelphia was we didn't win, because I definitely wish they would have kept it together," Brind'Amour said. ". . . They brought in a bunch of new players, and I think that kind of disrupted the chemistry a little bit. But we were a very good team, and I think we had a lot of good years left in us if we had stayed together."

Brind'Amour, the captain on the Carolina team that won the 2006 Cup, set a Flyers record by playing in 484 consecutive games.

"That's kind of what playing in Philadelphia is all about," he said. "There's that mystique or standard . . . you played through injuries, you played tough. That's what Flyers do."

Brind'Amour is grateful to have a chance to thank Flyers fans.

"It's great because I left Philadelphia and it felt kind of weird; one day I was there and then I was gone and that was it, and I never got the chance to thank the people that meant so much to me there, so this is kind of a long time coming," he said.

Breakaways. Scott Laughton, injured when slammed into the boards early in Saturday's 4-0 loss in Ottawa, was one of five Flyers who took part in an optional skate Sunday. The Flyers had no update on whether he could play Monday.

scarchidi@phillynews.com

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