Barry Trotz is retiring as general manager of the Nashville Predators after three seasons.
The 63-year-old will remain in the role until a successor is found and stay with the team as an adviser. Trotz was hired as GM on Feb. 27, 2023, and officially replaced David Poile on July 1.
The Predators (25-23-6) are fifth in the Central Division entering their game against the St. Louis Blues on Monday (8 p.m. ET; FDSNMW, FDSNSO). They trail the Los Angeles Kings by four points for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.
“I’ve been in pro sports in some shape or form probably for 40 years now, and there comes a time when you realize that a lot of the stuff you’ve done and you’ve been immersed, you can’t be sometimes present in both places,” Trotz said. “You can’t be present in your job and you can’t be present at home. I just felt there’s an end date.
“There’s a responsibility that I feel to my family. I think you see your kids grow up, I’m very proud of my kids. Now they’re getting married, [I’ve] got grandkids now. You’re missing a lot of the dates. In this business, our kids very seldom have their birthdays on their birthdays; seldom am I present even at their birthdays sometimes. Those things that we always had to change, we did all of that. Now you’ve got grandkids, you’ve got all that, it becomes a little bit more real. A little bit of mortality, if you will … I don’t know if I’m going to be here tomorrow, and so I want to have some of those things with my family.”
Predators owner and majority chairman Bill Hasman said they’d like to have a new GM in place prior to the 2026 NHL Draft, which will be held June 26-27.
“That’s our hope,” Haslam said. “But the luxury of doing what we’re doing is we have a road to play this out the way we want instead of announcing this in April of (20)27 and thinking, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get a [general manager] here before June of (20)27. This allows us to do it the right way. We hope to have somebody by the draft of this year, but we’re not limited by that.”
Nashville qualified for the playoffs in Trotz’s first season as GM in 2023-24 (47-30-5) but lost the Western Conference First Round in six games to the Vancouver Canucks.
The Predators made two big forward signings after that season — Steven Stamkos (four years, $8 million average annual value) and Jonathan Marchessault (five years, $5.5 million AAV) — but Nashville finished 30th in the NHL in 2024-25 (30-44-8).
After a 6-12-4 start to this season, Trotz told The Tennessean on Nov. 24 that he was not firing coach Andrew Brunette and that the players deserved the bulk of the blame. The Predators were last in the League in goals per game (2.32) and 30th in goals against (3.68) at the time.
Stamkos has 39 points (25 goals, 14 assists) and is minus-16 in 54 games this season; Marchessault has 14 points (nine goals, five assists) and is minus-19 in 35 games.
“I need more [expletive] from them,” Trotz said. “I need more. … I’m watching the game systematically. I know who makes mistakes. When the puck is on someone’s stick and they pass it right to [the other team], that’s not [Brunette’s] fault.”
Nashville is 19-11-2 since then. It entered Monday 25th in the NHL in goals per game (2.83) and 27th in goals against (3.39).
“Obviously, very surprised; I think everyone was,” Predators captain Roman Josi said. “I don’t think anybody saw it coming from the team. Yeah, very surprised.
“… Obviously he’s still here and he’s still the GM. For us, we’ve got a game tonight, so we’re focused on the game tonight. We’re in a playoff hunt and there’s a lot of important games coming up. For the team, nothing really changes. I think our job is to make the playoffs and fight for a playoff spot. The rest is kind of not up to us, so it doesn’t change much for the team.”
Trotz was the first coach in Predators history, hired Aug. 6, 1997. He coached them from their inaugural expansion season in 1998-99 to 2013-14.
He went 557-479-60 in 1,196 games as Nashville’s coach and was 19-31 in seven playoff appearances, losing in the first round five times and in the second round twice. He went on to coach the Washington Capitals from 2014-15 to 2017-18, winning the Stanley Cup in his final season.
Trotz coached the New York Islanders from 2018-2019 to 2021-22, leading them to the playoffs in three of four seasons, including consecutive trips to the semifinals (2020, 2021).
He ranks fifth in NHL history with 914 wins as a coach.
“I want to talk about a couple rumors out there,” Trotz said. “I am healthy; this is not a health decision. I’m not getting back into coaching; this is not a coaching decision. Those are some of the rumors that are out there. I just want to dispel those.
“When I took this job, I said I didn’t want to do it to a point where I couldn’t do the rest of the stuff, have time for the rest of the stuff. In the back of my mind when I took the job, I was probably being fair and I was upfront with everybody that we’ll see where this goes. I wanted, out of respect to the organization and [ownership] and everybody, we’re trying to build something. We’re collecting draft choices, we’re developing people and all that.
“If I wanted to be here until we win the Stanley Cup, I don’t know how long that would be. So, I wanted to give them a defined date where it was clear on both sides.”
NHL.com independent correspondent Robby Stanley contribiuted to this report
