The Carolina Hurricanes coach had been asked this question again and again and again, about whether his team can win on the road, about what they need to do to win on the road. He didn't have any more answers than he had against the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference First Round or earlier in the Eastern Conference Second Round against the New York Rangers.
He doesn't have them now, when his team faces a chance to close out the Rangers in Game 6 at Madison Square Garden on Saturday (8 p.m. ET: ESPN, TVAS, SN), leading the best-of-7 series 3-2.
Through 12 games of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Hurricanes have managed to win seven games, and have a chance to move on to the Eastern Conference Final, without winning a single game away from PNC Arena.
[Complete Hurricanes vs. Rangers series coverage]
"That's a nonissue," Brind'Amour said Friday. "It's all I hear about. And it's like, we haven't played poorly on the road. Our game has been fine. There's been a couple of things that have gone squirrelly, penalties and then 5-on-3s. All of a sudden those games get tossed away. If that would have happened at home, it would have been the same thing.
"Every game takes on its own kind of life. There's the way we want to play, there's the way they're trying to play. We're playing good teams. This is how it goes."
But answers or not, Game 6 is a chance for the Hurricanes to prove themselves, to prove their worthiness, to show the rest of the NHL that they are true Stanley Cup contenders.
So can they win on the road?
"Of course we can," forward Andrei Svechnikov said.
The Hurricanes had a chance to clinch their first-round series against in Game 6 at TD Garden. Instead, the Bruins overwhelmed the Hurricanes in the third period to avoid elimination and push Carolina into a decisive Game 7 at PNC Arena.
Which the Hurricanes won.
"To go into it again against New York, we've got to win on the road," forward Seth Jarvis said. "That's going to be the biggest thing is, we've got to find a way to kind of grind one out there."
There were signs of life from areas that previously had been dormant for the Hurricanes in their 3-1 win in Game 5 on Thursday. They scored on the power play after going 0-for-9 on the man-advantage in the first four games of the second round. They got a third-period goal from Svechnikov, his first point of the series. They dominated the third period and gave the Rangers, who had 17 shots on goal, little space to work with throughout the game.
"The way we played was definitely something we want to replicate tomorrow," Jarvis said. "It just gives us a good ground base, a good framework for tomorrow."