Inside life as a rookie GM: A Q&A with the Nashville Predators’ Barry Trotz
“Welcome to the pros, newb.”
That sentiment just hits a bit differently for a “rookie” GM who has been an NHL institution for more than three decades. Barry Trotz was a scout and an AHL head coach before embarking on an NHL head coaching career spanning 23 seasons across three franchises. He netted a 2018 Stanley Cup, two Jack Adams Awards as coach of the year and 914 victories, the third-most all-time. And yet: when Trotz accepted the job last year to succeed longtime friend and mentor David Poile as GM of the Nashville Predators, it truly did mean diving into something new, even if it was in Music City, where Trotz coached the Preds for the first 15 seasons of their existence.
In summer 2023, Trotz took over a franchise seemingly embarking on a rebuild and fresh off a playoff miss. He instantly put his stamp on it with a flurry of high-impact moves, trading Ryan Johansen, buying out Matt Duchene and then pivoting to sign Ryan O’Reilly, Luke Schenn and Gustav Nyquist in free agency. The bold maneuvers paid off. Now, with the 2023-24 regular season almost complete, Nashville is on the verge of clinching a playoff spot.
How and why did Trotz steer the franchise back toward competitiveness so quickly? How did he navigate the vultures circling him at the trade deadline when he was trending toward being a seller? And was it really the cancelled U2 concert tickets that spurred Nashville’s incredible second-half turnaround?
Trotz, 61, recently caught up with Daily Faceoff to share his insights on Year 1 as a GM.
DAILY FACEOFF: Flashing back a year: Was being a GM something you had on your radar for a while, or did it come to pass relatively late?
BARRY TROTZ: Actually, I never had my eye on being a general manager at all. When I left Nashville, one of the things they said was, “You’ve been a big part of Nashville. If you ever come back to Nashville, we’d like you to be a part of it.” So in my head I’m thinking advisor or community, something like that. It wasn’t necessarily general manager, but I felt like I could help in player development or something like that.
And then, when David had reached out to me and said, “Hey, would you consider this?” That was really the first time I started thinking about it. It came to pass after that.
DFO: In terms of getting advice before commencing the gig as GM, surely it helped to have David as a sounding board. Were their any pointers from him or someone else that stuck in your head when you started the job?
TROTZ: I tried to take the best. I’ve been with David for a long time, in Washington with [Brian MacLellan] and then with Lou [Lamoriello] at the end [with the New York Islanders]. All three are excellent general managers and great people. I tried to take the things I thought were really good from everyone.
One thing David did – I was very fortunate, I was really part of starting the Preds from Day 1. Everybody goes to university to learn business and all that, and I got a chance in 1997, being hired a year before the team, to basically go to Hockey 101 for building an organization. David was very inclusive. He knew about the scouting, about different aspects. Back then we didn’t have too many employees. You’re building a dressing room, and you’re picking what kind of carpet you’re going to have, designs, all that stuff. One of the things we used to laugh about: “I wouldn’t stress too much about the carpet. The carpet will probably be here longer that you will,” being a rookie coach in the National Hockey League.
The great thing about it was, I got to be a part of it and see everything under the hood. Before that I was with Washington’s farm team, and sort of running the hockey part in Portland, Maine for David. So I had found players. They would give me 12 prospects and I would build a team around them. I would sign the depth forwards and build teams way back when. It was at a lower level but still very useful.
DFO: Your first offseason as Preds GM was fascinating. It started out in one direction: Ryan Johansen trade, Matt Duchene buyout, and David had traded Mattias Ekholm last season, so it looked like you were committing fully to a rebuild. But then free agency arrives and you zag. You sign Ryan O’Reilly, Luke Schenn, Gustav Nyquist and it seems you’re still trying to compete after all. What was your philosophy?
TROTZ: I’m like anybody else. I listen to different podcasts, different people in our industry. I remember when I did what I did, everybody’s like, “I thought they were rebuilding. What direction are they going? They don’t know what to do.” One of the things I was very conscious of was…the culture is good in Nashville, but I felt some players were getting stale, losing a little bit of their drive, and so I did what I did.
You saw our team (last season), we moved a lot of players out at the trade deadline. We ended up with no Roman Josi, no Filip Forsberg, they were injured. And all these players, minor league players, Ryan McDonagh really took that group and led that group. And we hung around and really didn’t get eliminated until like game 80. That really said that our culture and leadership were going to be strong.
One thing that really resonated was, one general manager who is a good friend, who’s had Stanley Cup teams, fantastic teams, he said to me, “If I had to redo something with my team: I had a number of veteran players, we had moved out all our stars, we were on the downside and we weren’t going to win any more Cups. I got rid of everybody, and we said, ‘We’re going to put all our kids in the NHL and let them develop in the NHL. And the mistake was, instead of the kids developing and starting to thrive over time in the NHL, they were never able to thrive. They were just trying to survive.’ ” And all those prospects that you thought were going to be good players started losing all their confidence and never had NHL careers. The organization became one of the bottom teams, and it’s taken over a decade to bring it back to learning how to win again.
So it was very, very evident to me that I had to have a couple of those players who could allow the young guys to thrive. And to develop. I was very transparent with the fans early in the year. I said, “I don’t know how this is going to end. I don’t know if we’re going to be a good team or a bad team, but we might be sneaky good because our culture’s strong.”
And what happened was exactly that. [Head coach] Andrew (Brunette) came in, we wanted to play a different style, we wanted to do things a little bit differently, and he did a fantastic job. Our team took a while to get the identity we wanted, and we started to thrive.
DFO: With the O’Reilly addition, everyone knew what he brought to the table, so what he’s done this year isn’t a huge surprise. But few if anyone saw this coming from Nyquist. He’s dealt with a lot of injuries in the past, but he’s had such a big year. So what did you see in him? Obviously you saw something that others didn’t in terms of his ability to bounce back.
TROTZ: I saw hockey IQ. I saw professionalism. I saw a player who is a pro. People don’t understand if they aren’t in the dressing room, not around the day-to-day of the player, you sometimes have this perception that a guy’s a pro who works hard because that’s what you see on the ice. But being a pro is not just working hard on the ice. It’s how you deal with stuff, how you interact, how you balance family life and recovery. The sport demands a lot from you. Walking out of the rink, you could see it, how he worked in practice, how he prepared himself, how he interacted. You hear from other coaches. And you also just watch the game and you can always tell which players the coaches really trust when it counts. And he was always a guy I felt would be good around our younger group.
And so we made, I want to say, some culture signings. Ryan O’Reilly was to me, it goes without saying, he loves the game, he works at the game, he’s a winner, he’s a serial winner. I’ve seen ‘The Factor’ as part of Team Canadas, at the World Cup of Hockey, World Championships in my early years when we weren’t making the playoffs, so I got to see a lot of him and coached a lot of games against him. Same thing with Nyquist. And then Luke Schenn was a profile I felt our team needed, especially on the back end. He’s a bit more of a cultural old-school type. He knows when there’s got to be a change of tempo or momentum. I knew he could play with guys like Roman Josi to keep the wolves off him.
DFO: You’ve been asked about this one a lot, but I want to know if it’s as big of a deal as it’s made out to be: U2, the concert, The Sphere in Vegas, and the decision to deny the team of that privilege. After that, the team goes on a 16-0-2 run. For you and Andrew Brunette, was this a conscious decision to spark the team? Or was it more just a storyline that we the media–
TROTZ: –No, not at all. That storyline that we were trying to spark the team – not at all. Obviously you want to spark them, but that wasn’t the intention. I’m a big culture guy. I’m not necessarily worried about the score every night. The score takes care of itself. What I do worry about is, every game is winnable in the National Hockey League. I know some teams are more loaded than others, I get it, but there’s a big balance, and if you’re going to win in this league, it starts with a cultural standard. Everybody’s looking at that one game against Dallas where we got smoked 9-2. Everybody thought it was that, but it wasn’t. I can go two or three games back. We beat Arizona, we had no business beating them, and I didn’t like our focus, execution or mindset. It was Jersey next, and it was right after the all-star break, that five-day break, we didn’t have the right mindset to win. We had the mindset to put our uniform on and see what happens.
So after that third time and especially that Dallas game, enough was enough. We had an afternoon game in St. Louis and then we were going out to Vegas, because that was our next game, and it just happened that U2 was playing its last concert, and the players asked, “Would that be possible for us to go out early?” There’s a cost to that because you’ve got hotel rooms, all that. Players don’t do that – they just got their tickets, spent whatever. But the organization, in terms of the flight, going to Vegas and you’ve got to get 45 rooms at X amount of dollars, meals and all that, that’s a big number. To me that’s a privilege that you’re asking for.
If we lost three games, we played our balls off, I wouldn’t care. But if you’re not going to put the time and energy in and the focus to give yourself a chance, there’s no reason we should be rewarded for that. To me that’s a losing culture, not a winning culture. Right after the Dallas game, I walked in and said, “It doesn’t morally feel right that we should be going to Vegas early to reward these guys.” Not just to me but to the people we were supposed to play in front of every night. That was a quick conversation. I talked to Roman Josi and leadership and said, “Just to let you know, we are coming back after St. Louis and we’ve got to get our right mindset.”
This is the great thing that people miss the boat on: they think it was a punishment. What it was is a reset of priorities in our whole group’s lives. The priority of being a hockey player. The reason we did so well [afterward], was all on the players. They have the moral fiber and backbone to understand all that. They might have had a kickback internally, but never to me. They could’ve pouted and said, “They didn’t let us go,” and their give-a-shit factor could be really low. They didn’t. the response I got from them was, “You know what, he’s right, we’re way better than this, let’s get it going.” It galvanized them because they have great leaders.
I always look at it like my kids. If I say, Clean up your room, they don’t do it, clean up your room, they don’t do it, clean up your room, they don’t do it, and then I say let’s go to a movie tonight and have a lot of fun? To me, that’s not teaching morals, that’s being soft and entitled, and the Nashville Predator foundation is never soft and entitled.
DFO: So in this case – were you also denying yourself? Did you have tickets too? Were you going to go to U2?
TROTZ: (Laughing) Yes! Absolutely! I love U2.
DFO: Damn. That sucks!
TROTZ: That does suck. They’re on my bucket list.
DFO: Especially in The Sphere!
TROTZ: In The Sphere. Exactly. And sometimes you have to do what’s right, what’s not popular or easy or comfortable. That was one of those things. That’s all.
DFO: So now that you’ve gone through that first trade deadline as a GM…at that point, in the standings the team was sort of teetering. So were the sharks circling? I’m talking metaphorically, not San Jose. As a first-time GM, did you get that sense? Did people try to get you to sell?
TROTZ: (Laughing) Oh yeah. I know I got tested. There were a couple GMs that I think are very straightforward, and I’ve done some trades with those people already, and there’s no bullshit. And there are some others that I know tested me, some that, I came at them a little more unconventional.
Everyone wants dollar for dollar, which is great, you have to for some teams. We were in a situation where we had lots of cap space, our payroll was low, we had a lot of dead money because of what I did in the summer, we do for the next two years, but we had a really low payroll. We had flexibility, we had draft choices, and I wasn’t only looking at players, I was looking at prospects of other teams. I was OK working with teams and saying, “If you want to give me a draft choice, I’m looking for this,” and I didn’t care if it was two years down the road, because we have a lot of draft capital for the [near] future. And we have [AHL affiliate] Milwaukee which is a very young team and went on a 15-game heater themselves, so we had prospects in the pipeline. I was going in as a seller probably, but I also said to the players, “If you show me…” The players will show you and tell you which way you’ve got to go. If we have to become a buyer, I’m going to have to balance that out.
So at the trade deadline, it’s a lot easier if you know you’re a buyer or seller. I had to be both, and I think it’s been great for my growth to have the balance of, I didn’t want to affect the core too much because they were headed in the right direction, but I wanted to replace a couple other elements. I had some free agents – which ones do I keep, which ones do I re-sign? That all had to be done on short order. I had a good staff, good management around me, good scouts, and we accomplished what we set out to do.
DFO: Looking at where the team is – you haven’t clinched yet but it’s very close, and you’ll be on the road in Round 1 – are you looking at teams like the Florida Panthers of last year? Trying to study those archetypes and figuring out how to go on a run as a low seed?
TROTZ: To me the playoffs are critical for development. Getting your players to understand the different level of pressure that is on you mentally, physically, emotionally and be calm in those situations. I think we’ve been playing playoff hockey since the All-Star break minus the first three games. I think that prepares us. [Last Thursday] against the St. Louis Blues was the first time I felt like we were the hunted. We’ve been hunting everybody else this year.
In the big moments when the team was teetering, our guys, guys who have won, they got it done. And so, the guys around them could see that, when you need to block that shot, because sometimes desperation, and throwing your body in dangerous situations, is part of winning. If you’re a young guy and you’re seeing veteran guys doing it, you’re going, “If I don’t do it, they’re not going to respect me.” So they pull you into the fight. I was happy we got the win, but I also know we’ve got some growth to go.
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