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Brind'Amour's decision to stay showed that marquee players wouldn't flee the market at first opportunity, and few players carry as much credibility with their peers as Brind'Amour.

"The first few years, it didn't look like a good place to play from the outside looking in," Brind'Amour said. "A lot of nights the building was half-empty and the team didn't do that well. At the end of the day, you want to play on a team that's going to win. All the other stuff is secondary. It's a beautiful place to live and all that -- now more than ever, now that we've had some success."

That group almost certainly will be joined by a number of current players. A native of Alberta, Glen Wesley spent the first 10 seasons of his NHL career in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Since moving here with the team, he's gone native: An active member of a Baptist church in Cary, he owns a beach house on the coast and does TV commercials for a car dealer.

Brind'Amour's picture hangs on the wall at Milton's Pizza in North Raleigh, and he has adopted N.C. State with the fervor of any Wolfpack Club donor.

Stillman's son Riley is a member of one of the new upper-tier youth-hockey teams sponsored by the Hurricanes, a program Francis helped start, and he's joined by the sons of coach Peter Laviolette and broadcaster John Forslund.

And who knows where Eric Staal and Cam Ward will find themselves two decades from now? After all, Ward and his wife are spending this summer in Raleigh, taking their new boat out on Jordan Lake and Falls Lake.

Certainly Wesley never thought he would settle here.

"It's been something you would never expect, especially moving here and seeing how things have changed," Wesley said. "It wasn't your typical big-city sports town, and we were put in a position where we had to grow the sport. I think everybody in the organization from management to the players has done a good job of that."

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