RALEIGH, N.C. \u2014 Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final is Thursday at the Lenovo Center. The Carolina Hurricanes will look to rebound after a last-minute Game 1 loss.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Former Carolina Hurricane and big fan, Bates Battaglia, will be watching his former team and teammate
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Battaglia played on the Canes’ 2002 Stanley Cup Final team with current coach Rod Brind’Amour
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Battaglia owns Teets and Lucky B’s in Raleigh<\/p>\n
One former Cane and big fan, Bates Battaglia, will be watching his former team and teammate.<\/p>\n
Battaglia played on a line with current Head Coach Rod Brind’Amour during their run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2002.<\/p>\n
Battaglia said you won\u2019t find better fans than the diehard Caniacs, and the team won\u2019t find a better coach than his former teammate Brind\u2019Amour.<\/p>\n
He said he is confident because when “Roddy” speaks, players listen, and there\u2019s nobody better at motivating this team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s kind of incredible,\u201d Battaglia said. \u201cI came down to North Carolina thinking, ‘well, what’s Carolina about as far as hockey?’\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for the then-rookie forward to find out in 1997.<\/p>\n
Battaglia said he learned how much hockey meant to fans as a member of the 2002 team that reached the Stanley Cup Final but lost in five games to the Detroit Red Wings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never forget that. That was the most fun I ever had playing hockey,\u201d Battaglia said.<\/p>\n
The tough, hard-nosed player was a key cog in the famed BBC line with right winger Erik Cole and Brind\u2019Amour.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s awesome seeing Roddy doing what he\u2019s doing. It\u2019s not a surprise. When I played with him, he was a leader. He’s a leader now. He ran the locker room then. He’s running the locker room now, and he’s put the team in a position to do great things,\u201d Battaglia said.<\/p>\n
Battaglia also wanted to position himself for success in life after hockey.<\/p>\n
He and his brother, Anthony Battaglia, opened Teets on Glenwood Avenue and a dive bar nearby, Lucky B\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The retired NHL player said the Glenwood South district has been ideal for drawing crowds.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brother and I decided to name it after our grandfather, and it just kind of came together over COVID,\u201d Battaglia said about Teets.<\/p>\n
Battaglia\u2019s grandfather, Sam \u201cTeets\u201d Battaglia, had ties to the mob in Chicago, working as a loan shark with notorious gangsters like Al Capone. Bates Battaglia, 50, said it was his grandfather\u2019s way of putting food on the table for his family.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up, I didn’t know a whole lot about it. My dad didn’t really relay that story. But, as we got older, we got to know about it,\u201d Battaglia said.<\/p>\n
With Hurricanes\u2019 flags and banners up and down Glenwood Avenue, as well as homages to the team across the city, Battaglia said there\u2019s nowhere else he would rather be.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a hockey town. Like, we are the, you know, the only professional sport here. Twenty years later, here we are again, and hopefully the same result. It\u2019s been a great ride so far but we\u2019ve got a little more to go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Battaglia said there is nothing he would rather see than the Hurricanes raise another banner and lift their first Stanley Cup since 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH, N.C. \u2014 Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final is Thursday at the Lenovo Center. The Carolina…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5107],"tags":[1249,194,29,5176,5,195,4,2668,35533,43,5467],"class_list":["post-591326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-carolina-hurricanes","tag-app-sports","tag-carolina","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-carolinahurricanes","tag-hockey","tag-hurricanes","tag-nhl","tag-north-carolina","tag-patrick-thomas","tag-sports","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116694055907732155","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}