They met in the Baltimore Civic Center press box almost 40 years ago and the fire on ice of the former Baltimore Skipjacks head coach still burns. The future Hockey Hall of Fame inductee has returned to Nashville to become the Predators general manager and joins Nestor to talk about how to win another Stanley Cup on the management side and what keeps him motivated to maintain a grueling hockey life and NHL pace that is teaching him new lessons in the game.
Barry Trotz, former coach and current General Manager of the Nashville Predators, discussed his transition from coaching to management, highlighting the increased responsibilities and constant workload. He emphasized the importance of building a young, competitive roster, mentioning key acquisitions like Stamkos and Marchessault. Trotz reflected on his long-standing relationship with Nashville, noting the city’s growth and the team’s development since he first brought ice to the city. He also shared his philosophy on leadership, stressing the importance of respecting coaches’ decisions and maintaining a supportive relationship with them.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Nashville Predators, Barry Trotz, Stanley Cup, General Manager, coaching transition, team rebuild, player development, draft picks, free agency, Nashville growth, hockey industry, institutional knowledge, team strategy, player contracts, future Hall of Fame.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Barry Trotz
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 task of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. If you’re wondering out on the web stream why I’m wearing my Nashville Predators jersey, this is the hockey segment you’ve been waiting for. We’re going to be up at Green mount station on Thursday doing the Maryland crab cake tour. Back to the Future scratch. I’ll still have TVs everywhere, and on one of those TVs, there’ll be the Stanley Cup Finals coming on and last place baseball for the Orioles. We’ll also be at fade leads next Friday during the Maryland crab cake Tour presented by curio wellness, as well as our friends at Liberty. Pure solutions. This guy is like Earl Weaver. I did the Earl Weaver book earlier here. Earl once told a manager he’s going to the F and Hall of Fame. This guy is going to the Hockey Hall of Fame. And he’s been my friend since we’ve been very young people. He is bragging about his sunburn on his head because he’s actually seen the sun for the first time since he’s taking the job as the General Manager of my now Nashville Predators. This is my old jersey. You had this made for me back 20 years ago, 20 years ago, Barry, maybe first time you had the mustard jerseys. I think it was right, probably 21 years now. Still misfits me, but it’s really good with pads underneath of it. It’s number one on the back, which makes me a goalie in your world. How is the new gig working out for you? I mean, I think we can all look at standings and see challenges, and see all of that. I’m interested in, Barry, my friend, who was the Western league Scout, who became the assistant to the assistant coach, and the assistant coach and the head coach and all of this. Um, this is a different job for you, right? You This is a change of life for you. A little later in life, you’re pretty good at the coaching thing, for sure, huh? Yeah, and there’s
Barry Trotz 01:39
no question, you know, I think everybody goes through, you know, I was coaching for, started coaching with 22 and, you know, all of a sudden I You’re turning 60 and and you’re going, you know, what, I probably time to let it go for the younger guys, and let them do the coaching. And you get, you know, good at what you do, I guess when you do it for so many years and looking for a new challenge, and when this opportunity came up, I got a call from David, and still I was getting calls from a number of teams on the coaching gig, and I believe it or not, I got a I got a call from a team this year seeing if I was going to stay as general manager. So I guess I made an impression coaching over over the years, but I think it was for me, Nashville has been my home. Came here in 97 and you know, David was, gave me the opportunity to start here, and I thought it’d be great, great thing to go full circle, and I have a real appreciation for all the stuff that David did over the years and given me an opportunity, but also all the stuff that you didn’t know when you’re sitting in his seat. And you know, it’s easy to sit in someone else’s seat and say, No, I wonder what he’s doing. You know, he, you know, he got the team set now, he just probably sitting up there and just evaluating the whole time I’m I don’t have enough hours in the day. It seems on sometimes. I think the biggest difference between coaching and managing is that when you’re coaching, you really, you’re in the fire for the find amount of time, be it nine or 10 months, and then you’re able to walk away a little bit and at least recharge your batteries. And you’re still working on hockey stuff, but you’re doing it on your own time as a general manager, you have a, maybe not as an intense burn all year, but you have a burn the whole year round. You really don’t, never leave your phone, you know, getting away. I have a place, as you know, in British Columbia and in used to go there for, you know, probably six weeks a year, recharge your batteries, you know, get some, some good R and R. I’ve been there seven or eight days maybe in the last two years. So, you know, I’ve taken, I think, two, four day sort of trips just to try to recharge. But it’s not enough. So when your phone’s on and your phone’s on all the time, so, you know, as a manager, and especially here, because we’re quite with with the predators or both sides are really, really connected. You’re really in sitting in this seat, you have probably 120 employees, whereas a coach, you really have to worry about 30 people. So as long as your door is open, people are walking through it and asking for stuff. So lot of meetings, and we’re doing a lot of different things with our hockey team, not only on the ice, but off the ice. We’re putting about a billion dollars, close to a billion dollars, into the building the next 10 years, so becoming a little bit of a contractor and future. With the rest of the organization. Bill Haslam is new owner. Is, is fantastic. And then, you know, we’ve had a practice rink that’s been here for, you know, same practice rink when I started here, I’ve been to that practice rink, yeah, and it’s, it’s, it’s Vanderbilt, right? Yeah, right by Vanderbilt. So it needs a, we need a new one, so that one’s going to be torn down and sort of putting everything in place, which, when it, when it’s all done, it’ll be state of the art and future proof for a long, long time, which is, is the key to anything in this business. You
Nestor Aparicio 05:35
brought the first sheet of ice to Nashville, didn’t you at that point? Like, brought
Barry Trotz 05:41
8an additional sheet because we we added on to our the original Centennial arena so, but we need more ice rinks. Nashville has grown. It’s become a lot of people have moved here. A lot of ex NHL ers have moved here. Anybody who’s played in California is moving to Tennessee when they retire, it seems so, not only in the hockey world, but I know Major League Baseball. Vanderbilt has a terrific program, and they send a lot of major leaguers, you know, return here and live here, and the NFL has discovered Nashville as well. So not only do we have the the music industry and the entertainment industry, we’ve got the sports industry. Sports industry moving into Nashville, and it’s a great place. It’s, I believe it’s about twice the size as it was when I, when I, when I came here 25 years ago.
Nestor Aparicio 06:34
Well, you wouldn’t recognize it the younger version of you, right? I mean, I, and I was coming down there in the 90s, especially when the Titans came on and you brought the team there like it, it’s become the it city, and when it came time for you to say, I’m going to keep coaching, or this opportunity is why you’re you don’t want to be a general manager of another team, right? This was, this was about the city and the opportunity, and you saying, I want to do something different with my life, because it would have been very, very easy for you to continue to coach, even if you didn’t want to, because they were willing to pay you quite handsomely to do it. This was, you know, I mean being your friend all of these years, I’m finding this fascinating. It’s the first conversation we’ve had, but I talked to you for a little bit last week to sort of set this thing up, and since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about you and how much your job has changed, and how as even as a really astute media guy, and I think I am thinking, well, it’s not that much different coaching, and it’s a different job, right? And you knew that, but you also welcome that, and then when you get into it, you realize you got to get young again, right? Yeah,
Barry Trotz 07:40
I think just like anything, you get to a point where I felt the coaching wise, that it takes a lot out of you, and I, I want to say that I was ready for it a little bit of a different challenge, like when you do something for 45 years or not, you know, 40 some years and you’re, you’re doing it, And I think I became fairly efficient at it, you know, I was just looking for a little bit of different boost, little change, not a midlife crisis, a late night, late looking to work even more. Yeah, well, you know, I was ready for retirement. Honestly, I was, and then, you know, I was intrigued by the fact, you know, I could have made a lot more money coaching than I am as a general manager some of the teams that were in some of their offers, but I just felt that time to come home and there’s an opportunity to, you know, Nashville was getting older as a team. It was in transition. David did a fantastic job of, you know, the team got in the playoffs, I think, you know, 14 of the last 15 years, and that was a real good job. Didn’t have a lot of draft choices, so it was a little bit of a RE, something a little bit of, I didn’t want to say rebuild, but trying to thread the needle. We still had some good players. We have Roman Yossi and Soros and Forsberg and and people like that. You know, Colton citizens, but we felt if we could add a couple pieces, we could stay relevant. But we made a couple deals of moving at home was still was a very good defenseman. We moved past duchaine, Johansen. We just moved by a lot of people. Tanner Geno we, we collect the draft choices. David did a great job of with that, and we started rebuilding and trying to build a roster, a young roster underneath the existing roster that’s here, but still trying to be fairly relevant. And last year, you know, we went into free agency and signed stamp coasts and Marsha so and replaced, you know, move Ryan McDonough. He wanted to go back to Tampa and get back home with his family, and so we got Brady Shea, so he added some pieces, but at the same time, by adding those pieces, the expectations and the way we played changed a little bit, and got off to a terrible start and never really i. Uh, got into the mix all year. So it was a really tough year. The the blessing of it, we have the fifth pick overall this year, some of our young guys that we thought would come up maybe after, you know, Christmas, and play a few games and get a get their toe in the water a little bit. They actually played, you know, 3040, 50 games. So the development curve on some of these guys is has moved up a little bit. I felt that what we did last year at free agency would buy us, you know, sort of 18 months to two years, and then start flipping over the young kids and getting a blend. We just have to move the timeline up a little bit. And we’re very fortunate that we got a lot of kids. Our scouts have done a pretty good job drafting sort of in that, let’s say, that mushy middle. So we’ve got some kids coming that are developing, or Milwaukee has been to the conference final two of the last three years, they lost in game five this year, which is the best of the five to Texas, or they would have made a third straight trip there. So we’ve got kids coming, and I wanted to add serial winners to our organization. I think I’ve done that with with Shay and and Stamkos and Marsha so and those are O’Reilly. They’ve all won cups. They’ve all been, you know, instrumental in in success. So we’re trying to surround our kids with those type of people. Barry
Nestor Aparicio 11:39
Trott is our guest, future Hall of Famer, now the general manager, not the head coach, of the Nashville Predators. I have my old mustard predator Jersey out the Trotsky gave about 20 years ago. I haven’t fanged finger down with you. I’ve been a hockey game since I walked out of the building in Las Vegas the night you won the Stanley Cup. I haven’t really watched hockey in that period of time, and I’ve been rather on the record about my relationship with the Leon’s family in the aftermath of you. But from a fan standpoint, it feels like five minutes ago. I have a lot of caps fans in my life, including Leonard Raskin talking about Ovechkin chasing the record all that they represented President’s Trophy this year and all that that happened for someone like you and I think in the business, no matter who it is, whether it’s John Harbaugh on the football side or, Lord knows, Brandon Hyde on the baseball side, here one day gone tomorrow, what you did in Nashville as a head coach for all of those years, and sort of seeing through the beginning and wanting to go back here, and you called it home, you know, I guess in your case, the notion that the islanders were all those years, and there’s been a lot that’s happened since you walked off the ice with the Stanley Cup. And it’s not like you did what I did, which is just sort of drop your hat and say, I’m done. It’s good. I’m good. I waited 40 years for a cup. I did it with my friend. I had the greatest night ever in Las Vegas, because you I felt like, sort of like walking off at the end, that you’ve done a lot since then, that you may never top that night, or you’re chasing that night in a different way, but all the years later, what is all of that? Do you think about that much? Or when you see a CAPS jersey, you see a veteran doing all that he was doing, but you’re so locked into what you’re doing, it’s sort of yesterday’s news to some degree, when you’ve done it, even though you spent your whole life doing it.
8Barry Trotz 13:26
Yeah, no, you’re correct. I mean, you move on those moments, you still have the relationship. I mean, I text Obi this this year when he hit some of those milestones, and, you know, he still he, you know, he was the best. He always called me champ or or boss man, when, when I coached him, and I’d say, hey, you know, he got re energized. And I think that team, you know, there was a energy with that team that, you know, being at the 50th year, the franchisees chasing the record, they were having a blast. They really were. And it was nice to see I might my time in Washington was great. The relationships that I had with all those the people, the players, the trainers, that’s never going to go away. We did something special. You know, it’s funny, you know, we, you know, everybody talks about chasing the Stanley Cup and and, and, you know, getting a ring and all that. And, you know what you really Chase? And this is, this is me. And the way I think I’m probably wired is that, you know, it’s great to have a ring, and I’ve put it on once since I’ve got it, it’s in a safe place. I showed my family. Well, actually put on twice. I put it on once when the team gave it to me, when they came into the island the year after, and I put it on once for my family, and that’s been it. I have a I have a fake one that I show to people, because they always say, Hey, can I see a ring? And I have a fake one that looks like it. It’s probably. Made out of lead from China or something like that. But it’s it. I, you know, the the Stanley Cup. I mean, I didn’t ever want to be defined by by any metal or diamonds or anything like that. I want to be defined with the relationships I created, with the with the players, and we did something special. So, you know, when they and they say, What was the, you know, winning a Stanley Cup? You know, a lot of people talk about the rings and the cup. I I just talk about the journey with those guys. I mean, that that’s the that’s the stuff that stays with you forever. I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 15:36
it feels closer than it really is objects in the rear view mirror, like the song, the meat love song, but like he’s still playing in the red and still, you know all that, it feels like it wasn’t that long ago. It feels probably a long time ago to you. That’s all I’m saying. Anybody that hasn’t tasted that success of doing that, because you chased that your whole life, and he’s still chasing it again, right? Eventually, like, Hey, I thought he’s gonna come back and play again next year, because he can, and you’re the general manager, because you can, and you take on challenges because who you are, right? Yeah,
Barry Trotz 16:09
I think you know, if you’re a player or if you’re a coach, you’re naturally competitive. And so what happens is that there is a I always found that when I went from coaching to the general manager seat, I said I hated game day the most as a general manager, because I missed the adrenaline on the bench, the the the energy on the bench, the you would get an adrenaline high, you know game day, during the game, you’d have a crash. After the game, win or lose, you’d have a crash, and then you started over again. As a general manager, you’re removed, you’re part of it, and you’re still, you know, you’re still invested. But it’s not the same adrenaline i for me anyways, because I’ve been in the in the fold, on the bench, and the the bickering and the and the the teams going at it, bickering at each other, in the trash talk, and, you know, the trying to out coach the other coach, and making adjustments and and being in the moment and being emotionally, just all invested. You’re still emotionally invested, but just a different level of intensity it. You know, when you’re on the bench, it’s like being watching it in HD. And then when you’re up as a general manager, and I’m up in the crow’s nest there, it feels like I’m watching 70s TV up there. You know, it’s not as acute and and that, but you’re still emotionally involved, but you’re looking at it a little different perspective. As a coach, you’re trying to win the day. As a general manager, you’re trying to win day, but you’re also trying to win the year, and it might be four years down the road, type of thing you’re always planning that way, where, I think, as a coach here, your your focus is strictly on winning the day.
Nestor Aparicio 18:07
8How often do you get mad at your coach? See, I wouldn’t have done that. I mean, that’s probably the first thing that I would say. That’s natural right to say, I made that decision every minute for 40 years, and now I can’t make that decision. I can’t second guess it, but I wouldn’t have done that. I
Barry Trotz 18:23
the first year, I did not. I was very conscious of not doing that.
Nestor Aparicio 18:32
The hardest thing in the world to not do it is
Barry Trotz 18:34
and I was very, very conscious of that my first year, all the things that I hated the general manager doing to me as a coach. I didn’t do any of that. I made sure that I was totally the opposite. What’s
8Nestor Aparicio 18:51
your number one rule? Thing you’ll never do as a general manager to the coach that that you didn’t like as a coach? What is that thing?
Barry Trotz 18:58
I wouldn’t I wouldn’t tell them who to play. I won’t do that in front of a group. I’ve always said to Bruno, and I think it’s Bruno is my, the only coach that I’ve had, and he’s a former player with me. I think I’m a little bit of a probably been a mentor to him when he got into coaching, that I said to him, Whatever decision you make is the right decision.
Nestor Aparicio 19:26
I need a boss like you. Can you be my boss? Can I be your coach? But,
Barry Trotz 19:29
8but you know, when it doesn’t work out, it’s not necessarily the right decision. All the time,
Nestor Aparicio 19:32
I made a recommendation,
Barry Trotz 19:36
but I think what I made sure that, if it, you know, I come down after the game, and if I want to say anything to the group, I know some general managers come down and they want to make suggestions, and they do it in front of everybody, or they’re not happy, and they do it in front of everybody. I do not do that. I used to hate. That because you’re working
Nestor Aparicio 20:01
backwards from it after that? Sure, yeah. And so I call that wildcatting In a general like, and when I ran a business, I’m like, we don’t Wildcat in the meetings, you know, like, it’s not good. It’s not no.
8Barry Trotz 20:12
So if I have any problem with with Bruno, I will generally say, just come into my office here, because I have a small office for, you know, sending players up and down, or just a private space right right next to the locker room. There’s a coach’s room, I should say, and I will just pull them in and say, Hey, I didn’t I. What are we trying to do there? You know, just fill me in and what you’re trying to do. And this is what I saw, and try to be respectful. If you have a horrible game, we aren’t talking about that game after the game. We’re going to we’re going to sleep on it, and then cooler heads will prevail the next day. So I can
Nestor Aparicio 20:53
make an observation here in the history of the sport. And I, you know, I don’t want to say it as a stat, but the thing that you and poyle had for the longest, longest time, not dissimilar to Harbaugh and Ozzy and one guy running the Ravens here, there haven’t been a whole lot of franchises where, if you and David could work it out, you worked it out forever and ever and ever to the end, until you weren’t there anymore. You had never really worked for another general manager till you came to DC, right? I mean, like that, there is only one way. There was a predator way of doing it, for better or worse, and that’s the way you knew.
Barry Trotz 21:28
Yeah, exactly. And then obviously, when I went to Washington, was a little bit different. And then when I went to the island, it was, it was a little bit different. So I think I tried to take the best of the things that David used to do, try to take the best of what Mac did and take the best of what what Lou does. And I understand that everybody has their own style. I try to incorporate everything. There’s things that as a in a manager’s situation, you have more tentacles. As a coach, you’re just coaching the team. So you’re, you’re in charge of all your assistant coaches. So you’ve got the power play, you got the penalty kill, and you oversee that in the areas. As a general manager, I’m still learning you’re, you have to learning the CBA, the rules, the all the interest, all those sort of tentacles that come off the business side, salary cap, you know, dealing with with agents. You know, that’s the one thing that I you know as a coach, you you’re able to do things quick. Now you’re dealing with agents who will you get a contract done, it might take you months. And that’s I’m learning patience. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 22:45
8I was going to say, and this was my observation, literally, from talking to you last week to today, this was going to be the crux of, here’s my wisdom in all of this. You sat on the bench and made lots of right here, right now, urgent decisions that, for better or worse, it worked. It didn’t work. Like, to your point, what your coach goes through, you know, that gig, pretty good. Yeah, this gig here, nothing. Ha, there aren’t fast decisions at ever Right? Like, there’s no other than a draft pick, and you even have 510 minutes to figure that out if you want to. None of it happens. Bang, bang. As the General Manager, maybe a trade, or, you know, call an injury, something like that, that would affect you. But decision making is all much more top side, strategic, well thought out. Sleep on it. There’s nothing sleep on it with coaching. It’s happening right now. The clock’s going. It has to happen right now. That’s a totally different way your mind works. I think, right, yeah, yeah,
Barry Trotz 23:40
it does. And it’s sometimes it’s frustrating for me. I know there’s no question it is. You talk about, you know, trying to get a deal done with, with a with an agent, you know, you have a deal. You think that totally and then all, you know, the deals right there, and they’ll, can you add this on, no, and you add this on, no, okay, do we have a deal? No, can we add this on, you know, and you’re like, enough, enough. We’re paying you a lot. It’s a fair deal. But I do, I do know that the whole negotiating, David was very good at it and stubborn at it. I think he’s passed it on to his son, Brian. What’s
Nestor Aparicio 24:27
he doing now? Do you call him? Get a little advice once in a while, David? David
Barry Trotz 24:31
is a, is a advisor to to the staff. Yeah. All right, so
8Nestor Aparicio 24:36
you still have him, you can, you can bail you out from time to time. Help you
Barry Trotz 24:40
bail me out and give me. Give me direction. I still, I still have to say I’m my I’m my own man, if you will. I came in, and he handed me the keys, and I did some bold moves right out of the gate. I mean, there was no I wasn’t messing around. I was I don’t know if David would have done that or not. Yeah, you know, he was, he’s got a lot more patience and but he’s also got, he’s forgot more about this game in this position that I’m in. And, you know, he’s forgot more than I know, after, you know, a couple years in this in this seat. So, you know, I just, I value every time he he calls, he goes, You know, my Is this too much information, you know? Like, I don’t mean you know. And I said, no, no. I said, anytime you talk, just keep talking. Because every time you’re talking, there’s lots of wisdom in there. So we have a good relationship that way.
Nestor Aparicio 25:37
Last thing Barry trots is here. He is the general manager of the national price. I want to bring this to you from the because you were here in Baltimore many years ago. People don’t remember that, but there are pictures. There’s
Barry Trotz 25:48
8actually hockey cards where you had a lot of hair, nice brown suit, you know, you look great. Yeah, you can
Nestor Aparicio 25:53
buy that out on eBay. I’ve seen that, the notion that, like all of these, years later, you go back to Nashville, and you said to me, you called it home. And I remember running into David poyle in the press box in Anaheim during the 1998 Super Bowl. I was out there in San Diego. I drove up and I ran into Dave, and he said, I hired Barry Trotz to be my coach. We’re going to be called the Nashville Predators. And I’m like, Nashville’s got an NH why tell me about this? And then you went there and made it work for two decades. It’s there now. The city’s built. Country music, Garth Brooks, all that going on, all the football team, everything that’s happened there, for you to go back there and try to make it work, and understanding that you were around when they were picking the color schemes, when they were picking the name first in employees, you were all of that. There’s just something different about that. And here in Baltimore, as I have Camden Yards over my shoulder, which wasn’t here, yeah, we were trying to keep the baseball team when you were the hockey coach here with the skip Jackson, when we didn’t keep the hockey team, there’s just something about finishing something you start, and there’s something about as we lost Jim Henneman, famous sports writer, here last week, and all of these old Orioles people came in, and we had this new ownership here. And it’s not going well. You can look at the standings that there is something about institutional knowledge, institutional memory and something that’s very special to you about that organization. You wouldn’t want to been the general manager some other place and go into another place, there was something really important about you coming back. And I know you probably don’t think about it much when you drive into town and go to your office or whatever, but like I said, You brought the first sheet of ice to Nashville. I mean, that sort of from and I think everybody in Nashville would see it that way as well. But there is something about when that’s in your blood. You want to come back and make sure that it’s done right. And you want to be there when the Cup comes to Nashville.
Barry Trotz 27:46
Yeah, I want to, you know, I know that when I, when I came here, you know, we moved a lot of great pieces, the grandlands, the EK homes, you know, sort of say, going into a little bit of a rebuild mode, but at the same time, we still had some good players that trying to thread the needle, very similar to what Washington did. You know, we wanted to build a roster, a future roster, because what happened, David did such a good job, the Preds got into the playoffs year in and year you’re out, that you’re using those draft choices to add players at the deadline. When you’re drafting players, you get a young player and you need that extra piece to get in the playoffs or to add to it, those players sort of got pushed back a little bit. So I know that we were trying to we’re in a position now where we’ve got some good players that they’re getting older, and Father Time always wins that I’m going to try to leave a a say, a pathway for all a lot of the young players. We have to because that’s going to be our future. We’re trying to create a roster, a future roster that will be very, very competitive with our city, with the with the no state, with the team that treats their players, right? I think we feel like we can be one of those top 10 teams that everybody wants to be, be a part of, and sort of shrink the NHL, if you will. So we’re creating a we’ve got a real long prospect list, adding a number, a number five pick this year we got 523, and 2635 and 55 in the first two
Nestor Aparicio 29:35
rounds. You got to go. Then you got scouting to do you go make that many picks and to be is this the most important day of the year for you, right?
8Barry Trotz 29:41
Yeah, it really is. So we need to create a ghost roster, which in the future, and it probably will be for the for the next general manager to step in and be in a great spot. Nashville is is my team. I’ve coached in Washington and coached. The Island. But I’ve had, you know, almost a 20 year history with this team that I want to leave it in a great spot for, you know, my replacement eventually and hopefully, that that parade down. You know, we have a parade every, every day in Nashville. Just have to go on Broadway. I mean, it is, it’s crazy. But I if we win a cup in Nashville, Tennessee, it will be one of the biggest parties ever. You know, I
Nestor Aparicio 30:27
gotta come down and participate again. I’ve been out of hockey too long trots. I mean, I gotta come to, here’s a problem. Now, you’re running the thing, if I, if I come down, I’m not going to see you on a game day, because you’re going to have your game face on. And then I try to come down for like, Ronnie Millsap or something, country in your alley, and you’re like, dude, I’m the general manager to predators. I’m drinking for the fire hose. So, like, I, I don’t know, but I’m glad to have spent this 20 minutes with you, and I love you, and I appreciate you, and I, you know, hope to be there when you go into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and I hope to be there when you raise the Stanley Cup The next time. But I was there the last time, the first time. We had a lot of fun with that. We did have a lot of fun with that, didn’t
Barry Trotz 31:02
we? I was exhausted after that.
Nestor Aparicio 31:06
8Oh, well, listen, you’re exhausted right now trying to win. So I
Barry Trotz 31:09
was, I was exhausted after we won the cup, and then we had about a week of, I’ll say, a lot of refreshments, and then a lot of sleep. So there’s nothing like it. The best thing in the world is honest. Honestly. I if you win a Stanley Cup, you get to share it with everybody, everybody who’s important in your life, and you’re very important in my life. And we sort of grew up together, cut our teeth. You as a young reporter, me as a young coach, you make me cry. Don’t do it. So as we as we age, the memories are really what matters, and we’ve created some great ones together.
Nestor Aparicio 31:47
Well, if you win another Stanley Cup, I was there the last time he wants I guess I have to come along for the ride. Barry Trotz is here. He’s still doing it down there in Nashville. So all you folks, I’m going to Nashville. We’re going to go have a good time, go to the Ryman. We’re gonna do the Opry. Oh, I still have not been to the grand old Opry, so let’s put that on my that’s something I the black crows played there a couple months ago. I almost came down for that, that the opry is gonna be next time I come in, I’m gonna do that. All right,
Barry Trotz 32:12
I’ll tell you what the rhyme. If you can see one of those great acts in the Ryman thing. I
8Nestor Aparicio 32:16
saw Brian Adams at the Ryman. I can’t do better than that. Yeah, no,
Barry Trotz 32:20
there’s some, there’s some great I saw Bob Dylan in the in the rhyme, and it was fantastic. I
Nestor Aparicio 32:25
forget how connected you are that if I really want to do something, Dan, if I wanted to see Taylor Swift in Nashville, I bet, I bet I, I bet I got a guy, I better know a guy. No,
Barry Trotz 32:35
8I know a guy. There’s a guy. I know a guy who knows a guy, yeah, or I’m the guy I don’t know.
Nestor Aparicio 32:41
All right. All right. Shake it off. Shake off last year. Go make a bunch of draft picks. Go win the cup, and I’ll be there to ride your coattails. Barry Trotz, my friend, future Hall of Famer, running things down in Nashville, Tennessee. I am Nestor. We are W N, S T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Fang fingers, from Baltimore to Nashville. Stay with us. You.
Barry Trotz, former coach and current General Manager of the Nashville Predators, discussed his transition from coaching to management, highlighting the increased responsibilities and constant workload. He emphasized the importance of building a young, competitive roster, mentioning key acquisitions like Stamkos and Marchessault. Trotz reflected on his long-standing relationship with Nashville, noting the city’s growth and the team’s development since he first brought ice to the city. He also shared his philosophy on leadership, stressing the importance of respecting coaches’ decisions and maintaining a supportive relationship with them.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
8Nashville Predators, Barry Trotz, Stanley Cup, General Manager, coaching transition, team rebuild, player development, draft picks, free agency, Nashville growth, hockey industry, institutional knowledge, team strategy, player contracts, future Hall of Fame.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Barry Trotz
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 task of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. If you’re wondering out on the web stream why I’m wearing my Nashville Predators jersey, this is the hockey segment you’ve been waiting for. We’re going to be up at Green mount station on Thursday doing the Maryland crab cake tour. Back to the Future scratch. I’ll still have TVs everywhere, and on one of those TVs, there’ll be the Stanley Cup Finals coming on and last place baseball for the Orioles. We’ll also be at fade leads next Friday during the Maryland crab cake Tour presented by curio wellness, as well as our friends at Liberty. Pure solutions. This guy is like Earl Weaver. I did the Earl Weaver book earlier here. Earl once told a manager he’s going to the F and Hall of Fame. This guy is going to the Hockey Hall of Fame. And he’s been my friend since we’ve been very young people. He is bragging about his sunburn on his head because he’s actually seen the sun for the first time since he’s taking the job as the General Manager of my now Nashville Predators. This is my old jersey. You had this made for me back 20 years ago, 20 years ago, Barry, maybe first time you had the mustard jerseys. I think it was right, probably 21 years now. Still misfits me, but it’s really good with pads underneath of it. It’s number one on the back, which makes me a goalie in your world. How is the new gig working out for you? I mean, I think we can all look at standings and see challenges, and see all of that. I’m interested in, Barry, my friend, who was the Western league Scout, who became the assistant to the assistant coach, and the assistant coach and the head coach and all of this. Um, this is a different job for you, right? You This is a change of life for you. A little later in life, you’re pretty good at the coaching thing, for sure, huh? Yeah, and there’s
Barry Trotz 01:39
no question, you know, I think everybody goes through, you know, I was coaching for, started coaching with 22 and, you know, all of a sudden I You’re turning 60 and and you’re going, you know, what, I probably time to let it go for the younger guys, and let them do the coaching. And you get, you know, good at what you do, I guess when you do it for so many years and looking for a new challenge, and when this opportunity came up, I got a call from David, and still I was getting calls from a number of teams on the coaching gig, and I believe it or not, I got a I got a call from a team this year seeing if I was going to stay as general manager. So I guess I made an impression coaching over over the years, but I think it was for me, Nashville has been my home. Came here in 97 and you know, David was, gave me the opportunity to start here, and I thought it’d be great, great thing to go full circle, and I have a real appreciation for all the stuff that David did over the years and given me an opportunity, but also all the stuff that you didn’t know when you’re sitting in his seat. And you know, it’s easy to sit in someone else’s seat and say, No, I wonder what he’s doing. You know, he, you know, he got the team set now, he just probably sitting up there and just evaluating the whole time I’m I don’t have enough hours in the day. It seems on sometimes. I think the biggest difference between coaching and managing is that when you’re coaching, you really, you’re in the fire for the find amount of time, be it nine or 10 months, and then you’re able to walk away a little bit and at least recharge your batteries. And you’re still working on hockey stuff, but you’re doing it on your own time as a general manager, you have a, maybe not as an intense burn all year, but you have a burn the whole year round. You really don’t, never leave your phone, you know, getting away. I have a place, as you know, in British Columbia and in used to go there for, you know, probably six weeks a year, recharge your batteries, you know, get some, some good R and R. I’ve been there seven or eight days maybe in the last two years. So, you know, I’ve taken, I think, two, four day sort of trips just to try to recharge. But it’s not enough. So when your phone’s on and your phone’s on all the time, so, you know, as a manager, and especially here, because we’re quite with with the predators or both sides are really, really connected. You’re really in sitting in this seat, you have probably 120 employees, whereas a coach, you really have to worry about 30 people. So as long as your door is open, people are walking through it and asking for stuff. So lot of meetings, and we’re doing a lot of different things with our hockey team, not only on the ice, but off the ice. We’re putting about a billion dollars, close to a billion dollars, into the building the next 10 years, so becoming a little bit of a contractor and future. With the rest of the organization. Bill Haslam is new owner. Is, is fantastic. And then, you know, we’ve had a practice rink that’s been here for, you know, same practice rink when I started here, I’ve been to that practice rink, yeah, and it’s, it’s, it’s Vanderbilt, right? Yeah, right by Vanderbilt. So it needs a, we need a new one, so that one’s going to be torn down and sort of putting everything in place, which, when it, when it’s all done, it’ll be state of the art and future proof for a long, long time, which is, is the key to anything in this business. You
8Nestor Aparicio 05:35
brought the first sheet of ice to Nashville, didn’t you at that point? Like, brought
Barry Trotz 05:41
an additional sheet because we we added on to our the original Centennial arena so, but we need more ice rinks. Nashville has grown. It’s become a lot of people have moved here. A lot of ex NHL ers have moved here. Anybody who’s played in California is moving to Tennessee when they retire, it seems so, not only in the hockey world, but I know Major League Baseball. Vanderbilt has a terrific program, and they send a lot of major leaguers, you know, return here and live here, and the NFL has discovered Nashville as well. So not only do we have the the music industry and the entertainment industry, we’ve got the sports industry. Sports industry moving into Nashville, and it’s a great place. It’s, I believe it’s about twice the size as it was when I, when I, when I came here 25 years ago.
Nestor Aparicio 06:34
Well, you wouldn’t recognize it the younger version of you, right? I mean, I, and I was coming down there in the 90s, especially when the Titans came on and you brought the team there like it, it’s become the it city, and when it came time for you to say, I’m going to keep coaching, or this opportunity is why you’re you don’t want to be a general manager of another team, right? This was, this was about the city and the opportunity, and you saying, I want to do something different with my life, because it would have been very, very easy for you to continue to coach, even if you didn’t want to, because they were willing to pay you quite handsomely to do it. This was, you know, I mean being your friend all of these years, I’m finding this fascinating. It’s the first conversation we’ve had, but I talked to you for a little bit last week to sort of set this thing up, and since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about you and how much your job has changed, and how as even as a really astute media guy, and I think I am thinking, well, it’s not that much different coaching, and it’s a different job, right? And you knew that, but you also welcome that, and then when you get into it, you realize you got to get young again, right? Yeah,
Barry Trotz 07:40
8I think just like anything, you get to a point where I felt the coaching wise, that it takes a lot out of you, and I, I want to say that I was ready for it a little bit of a different challenge, like when you do something for 45 years or not, you know, 40 some years and you’re, you’re doing it, And I think I became fairly efficient at it, you know, I was just looking for a little bit of different boost, little change, not a midlife crisis, a late night, late looking to work even more. Yeah, well, you know, I was ready for retirement. Honestly, I was, and then, you know, I was intrigued by the fact, you know, I could have made a lot more money coaching than I am as a general manager some of the teams that were in some of their offers, but I just felt that time to come home and there’s an opportunity to, you know, Nashville was getting older as a team. It was in transition. David did a fantastic job of, you know, the team got in the playoffs, I think, you know, 14 of the last 15 years, and that was a real good job. Didn’t have a lot of draft choices, so it was a little bit of a RE, something a little bit of, I didn’t want to say rebuild, but trying to thread the needle. We still had some good players. We have Roman Yossi and Soros and Forsberg and and people like that. You know, Colton citizens, but we felt if we could add a couple pieces, we could stay relevant. But we made a couple deals of moving at home was still was a very good defenseman. We moved past duchaine, Johansen. We just moved by a lot of people. Tanner Geno we, we collect the draft choices. David did a great job of with that, and we started rebuilding and trying to build a roster, a young roster underneath the existing roster that’s here, but still trying to be fairly relevant. And last year, you know, we went into free agency and signed stamp coasts and Marsha so and replaced, you know, move Ryan McDonough. He wanted to go back to Tampa and get back home with his family, and so we got Brady Shea, so he added some pieces, but at the same time, by adding those pieces, the expectations and the way we played changed a little bit, and got off to a terrible start and never really i. Uh, got into the mix all year. So it was a really tough year. The the blessing of it, we have the fifth pick overall this year, some of our young guys that we thought would come up maybe after, you know, Christmas, and play a few games and get a get their toe in the water a little bit. They actually played, you know, 3040, 50 games. So the development curve on some of these guys is has moved up a little bit. I felt that what we did last year at free agency would buy us, you know, sort of 18 months to two years, and then start flipping over the young kids and getting a blend. We just have to move the timeline up a little bit. And we’re very fortunate that we got a lot of kids. Our scouts have done a pretty good job drafting sort of in that, let’s say, that mushy middle. So we’ve got some kids coming that are developing, or Milwaukee has been to the conference final two of the last three years, they lost in game five this year, which is the best of the five to Texas, or they would have made a third straight trip there. So we’ve got kids coming, and I wanted to add serial winners to our organization. I think I’ve done that with with Shay and and Stamkos and Marsha so and those are O’Reilly. They’ve all won cups. They’ve all been, you know, instrumental in in success. So we’re trying to surround our kids with those type of people. Barry
Nestor Aparicio 11:39
Trott is our guest, future Hall of Famer, now the general manager, not the head coach, of the Nashville Predators. I have my old mustard predator Jersey out the Trotsky gave about 20 years ago. I haven’t fanged finger down with you. I’ve been a hockey game since I walked out of the building in Las Vegas the night you won the Stanley Cup. I haven’t really watched hockey in that period of time, and I’ve been rather on the record about my relationship with the Leon’s family in the aftermath of you. But from a fan standpoint, it feels like five minutes ago. I have a lot of caps fans in my life, including Leonard Raskin talking about Ovechkin chasing the record all that they represented President’s Trophy this year and all that that happened for someone like you and I think in the business, no matter who it is, whether it’s John Harbaugh on the football side or, Lord knows, Brandon Hyde on the baseball side, here one day gone tomorrow, what you did in Nashville as a head coach for all of those years, and sort of seeing through the beginning and wanting to go back here, and you called it home, you know, I guess in your case, the notion that the islanders were all those years, and there’s been a lot that’s happened since you walked off the ice with the Stanley Cup. And it’s not like you did what I did, which is just sort of drop your hat and say, I’m done. It’s good. I’m good. I waited 40 years for a cup. I did it with my friend. I had the greatest night ever in Las Vegas, because you I felt like, sort of like walking off at the end, that you’ve done a lot since then, that you may never top that night, or you’re chasing that night in a different way, but all the years later, what is all of that? Do you think about that much? Or when you see a CAPS jersey, you see a veteran doing all that he was doing, but you’re so locked into what you’re doing, it’s sort of yesterday’s news to some degree, when you’ve done it, even though you spent your whole life doing it.
Barry Trotz 13:26
Yeah, no, you’re correct. I mean, you move on those moments, you still have the relationship. I mean, I text Obi this this year when he hit some of those milestones, and, you know, he still he, you know, he was the best. He always called me champ or or boss man, when, when I coached him, and I’d say, hey, you know, he got re energized. And I think that team, you know, there was a energy with that team that, you know, being at the 50th year, the franchisees chasing the record, they were having a blast. They really were. And it was nice to see I might my time in Washington was great. The relationships that I had with all those the people, the players, the trainers, that’s never going to go away. We did something special. You know, it’s funny, you know, we, you know, everybody talks about chasing the Stanley Cup and and, and, you know, getting a ring and all that. And, you know what you really Chase? And this is, this is me. And the way I think I’m probably wired is that, you know, it’s great to have a ring, and I’ve put it on once since I’ve got it, it’s in a safe place. I showed my family. Well, actually put on twice. I put it on once when the team gave it to me, when they came into the island the year after, and I put it on once for my family, and that’s been it. I have a I have a fake one that I show to people, because they always say, Hey, can I see a ring? And I have a fake one that looks like it. It’s probably. Made out of lead from China or something like that. But it’s it. I, you know, the the Stanley Cup. I mean, I didn’t ever want to be defined by by any metal or diamonds or anything like that. I want to be defined with the relationships I created, with the with the players, and we did something special. So, you know, when they and they say, What was the, you know, winning a Stanley Cup? You know, a lot of people talk about the rings and the cup. I I just talk about the journey with those guys. I mean, that that’s the that’s the stuff that stays with you forever. I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 15:36
it feels closer than it really is objects in the rear view mirror, like the song, the meat love song, but like he’s still playing in the red and still, you know all that, it feels like it wasn’t that long ago. It feels probably a long time ago to you. That’s all I’m saying. Anybody that hasn’t tasted that success of doing that, because you chased that your whole life, and he’s still chasing it again, right? Eventually, like, Hey, I thought he’s gonna come back and play again next year, because he can, and you’re the general manager, because you can, and you take on challenges because who you are, right? Yeah,
8Barry Trotz 16:09
I think you know, if you’re a player or if you’re a coach, you’re naturally competitive. And so what happens is that there is a I always found that when I went from coaching to the general manager seat, I said I hated game day the most as a general manager, because I missed the adrenaline on the bench, the the the energy on the bench, the you would get an adrenaline high, you know game day, during the game, you’d have a crash. After the game, win or lose, you’d have a crash, and then you started over again. As a general manager, you’re removed, you’re part of it, and you’re still, you know, you’re still invested. But it’s not the same adrenaline i for me anyways, because I’ve been in the in the fold, on the bench, and the the bickering and the and the the teams going at it, bickering at each other, in the trash talk, and, you know, the trying to out coach the other coach, and making adjustments and and being in the moment and being emotionally, just all invested. You’re still emotionally invested, but just a different level of intensity it. You know, when you’re on the bench, it’s like being watching it in HD. And then when you’re up as a general manager, and I’m up in the crow’s nest there, it feels like I’m watching 70s TV up there. You know, it’s not as acute and and that, but you’re still emotionally involved, but you’re looking at it a little different perspective. As a coach, you’re trying to win the day. As a general manager, you’re trying to win day, but you’re also trying to win the year, and it might be four years down the road, type of thing you’re always planning that way, where, I think, as a coach here, your your focus is strictly on winning the day.
Nestor Aparicio 18:07
How often do you get mad at your coach? See, I wouldn’t have done that. I mean, that’s probably the first thing that I would say. That’s natural right to say, I made that decision every minute for 40 years, and now I can’t make that decision. I can’t second guess it, but I wouldn’t have done that. I
Barry Trotz 18:23
the first year, I did not. I was very conscious of not doing that.
Nestor Aparicio 18:32
8The hardest thing in the world to not do it is
Barry Trotz 18:34
and I was very, very conscious of that my first year, all the things that I hated the general manager doing to me as a coach. I didn’t do any of that. I made sure that I was totally the opposite. What’s
Nestor Aparicio 18:51
your number one rule? Thing you’ll never do as a general manager to the coach that that you didn’t like as a coach? What is that thing?
Barry Trotz 18:58
I wouldn’t I wouldn’t tell them who to play. I won’t do that in front of a group. I’ve always said to Bruno, and I think it’s Bruno is my, the only coach that I’ve had, and he’s a former player with me. I think I’m a little bit of a probably been a mentor to him when he got into coaching, that I said to him, Whatever decision you make is the right decision.
8Nestor Aparicio 19:26
I need a boss like you. Can you be my boss? Can I be your coach? But,
Barry Trotz 19:29
but you know, when it doesn’t work out, it’s not necessarily the right decision. All the time,
Nestor Aparicio 19:32
I made a recommendation,
Barry Trotz 19:36
8but I think what I made sure that, if it, you know, I come down after the game, and if I want to say anything to the group, I know some general managers come down and they want to make suggestions, and they do it in front of everybody, or they’re not happy, and they do it in front of everybody. I do not do that. I used to hate. That because you’re working
Nestor Aparicio 20:01
backwards from it after that? Sure, yeah. And so I call that wildcatting In a general like, and when I ran a business, I’m like, we don’t Wildcat in the meetings, you know, like, it’s not good. It’s not no.
Barry Trotz 20:12
So if I have any problem with with Bruno, I will generally say, just come into my office here, because I have a small office for, you know, sending players up and down, or just a private space right right next to the locker room. There’s a coach’s room, I should say, and I will just pull them in and say, Hey, I didn’t I. What are we trying to do there? You know, just fill me in and what you’re trying to do. And this is what I saw, and try to be respectful. If you have a horrible game, we aren’t talking about that game after the game. We’re going to we’re going to sleep on it, and then cooler heads will prevail the next day. So I can
Nestor Aparicio 20:53
make an observation here in the history of the sport. And I, you know, I don’t want to say it as a stat, but the thing that you and poyle had for the longest, longest time, not dissimilar to Harbaugh and Ozzy and one guy running the Ravens here, there haven’t been a whole lot of franchises where, if you and David could work it out, you worked it out forever and ever and ever to the end, until you weren’t there anymore. You had never really worked for another general manager till you came to DC, right? I mean, like that, there is only one way. There was a predator way of doing it, for better or worse, and that’s the way you knew.
8Barry Trotz 21:28
Yeah, exactly. And then obviously, when I went to Washington, was a little bit different. And then when I went to the island, it was, it was a little bit different. So I think I tried to take the best of the things that David used to do, try to take the best of what Mac did and take the best of what what Lou does. And I understand that everybody has their own style. I try to incorporate everything. There’s things that as a in a manager’s situation, you have more tentacles. As a coach, you’re just coaching the team. So you’re, you’re in charge of all your assistant coaches. So you’ve got the power play, you got the penalty kill, and you oversee that in the areas. As a general manager, I’m still learning you’re, you have to learning the CBA, the rules, the all the interest, all those sort of tentacles that come off the business side, salary cap, you know, dealing with with agents. You know, that’s the one thing that I you know as a coach, you you’re able to do things quick. Now you’re dealing with agents who will you get a contract done, it might take you months. And that’s I’m learning patience. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 22:45
I was going to say, and this was my observation, literally, from talking to you last week to today, this was going to be the crux of, here’s my wisdom in all of this. You sat on the bench and made lots of right here, right now, urgent decisions that, for better or worse, it worked. It didn’t work. Like, to your point, what your coach goes through, you know, that gig, pretty good. Yeah, this gig here, nothing. Ha, there aren’t fast decisions at ever Right? Like, there’s no other than a draft pick, and you even have 510 minutes to figure that out if you want to. None of it happens. Bang, bang. As the General Manager, maybe a trade, or, you know, call an injury, something like that, that would affect you. But decision making is all much more top side, strategic, well thought out. Sleep on it. There’s nothing sleep on it with coaching. It’s happening right now. The clock’s going. It has to happen right now. That’s a totally different way your mind works. I think, right, yeah, yeah,
Barry Trotz 23:40
it does. And it’s sometimes it’s frustrating for me. I know there’s no question it is. You talk about, you know, trying to get a deal done with, with a with an agent, you know, you have a deal. You think that totally and then all, you know, the deals right there, and they’ll, can you add this on, no, and you add this on, no, okay, do we have a deal? No, can we add this on, you know, and you’re like, enough, enough. We’re paying you a lot. It’s a fair deal. But I do, I do know that the whole negotiating, David was very good at it and stubborn at it. I think he’s passed it on to his son, Brian. What’s
Nestor Aparicio 24:27
8he doing now? Do you call him? Get a little advice once in a while, David? David
Barry Trotz 24:31
is a, is a advisor to to the staff. Yeah. All right, so
Nestor Aparicio 24:36
you still have him, you can, you can bail you out from time to time. Help you
Barry Trotz 24:40
bail me out and give me. Give me direction. I still, I still have to say I’m my I’m my own man, if you will. I came in, and he handed me the keys, and I did some bold moves right out of the gate. I mean, there was no I wasn’t messing around. I was I don’t know if David would have done that or not. Yeah, you know, he was, he’s got a lot more patience and but he’s also got, he’s forgot more about this game in this position that I’m in. And, you know, he’s forgot more than I know, after, you know, a couple years in this in this seat. So, you know, I just, I value every time he he calls, he goes, You know, my Is this too much information, you know? Like, I don’t mean you know. And I said, no, no. I said, anytime you talk, just keep talking. Because every time you’re talking, there’s lots of wisdom in there. So we have a good relationship that way.
8Nestor Aparicio 25:37
Last thing Barry trots is here. He is the general manager of the national price. I want to bring this to you from the because you were here in Baltimore many years ago. People don’t remember that, but there are pictures. There’s
Barry Trotz 25:48
actually hockey cards where you had a lot of hair, nice brown suit, you know, you look great. Yeah, you can
Nestor Aparicio 25:53
buy that out on eBay. I’ve seen that, the notion that, like all of these, years later, you go back to Nashville, and you said to me, you called it home. And I remember running into David poyle in the press box in Anaheim during the 1998 Super Bowl. I was out there in San Diego. I drove up and I ran into Dave, and he said, I hired Barry Trotz to be my coach. We’re going to be called the Nashville Predators. And I’m like, Nashville’s got an NH why tell me about this? And then you went there and made it work for two decades. It’s there now. The city’s built. Country music, Garth Brooks, all that going on, all the football team, everything that’s happened there, for you to go back there and try to make it work, and understanding that you were around when they were picking the color schemes, when they were picking the name first in employees, you were all of that. There’s just something different about that. And here in Baltimore, as I have Camden Yards over my shoulder, which wasn’t here, yeah, we were trying to keep the baseball team when you were the hockey coach here with the skip Jackson, when we didn’t keep the hockey team, there’s just something about finishing something you start, and there’s something about as we lost Jim Henneman, famous sports writer, here last week, and all of these old Orioles people came in, and we had this new ownership here. And it’s not going well. You can look at the standings that there is something about institutional knowledge, institutional memory and something that’s very special to you about that organization. You wouldn’t want to been the general manager some other place and go into another place, there was something really important about you coming back. And I know you probably don’t think about it much when you drive into town and go to your office or whatever, but like I said, You brought the first sheet of ice to Nashville. I mean, that sort of from and I think everybody in Nashville would see it that way as well. But there is something about when that’s in your blood. You want to come back and make sure that it’s done right. And you want to be there when the Cup comes to Nashville.
Barry Trotz 27:46
8Yeah, I want to, you know, I know that when I, when I came here, you know, we moved a lot of great pieces, the grandlands, the EK homes, you know, sort of say, going into a little bit of a rebuild mode, but at the same time, we still had some good players that trying to thread the needle, very similar to what Washington did. You know, we wanted to build a roster, a future roster, because what happened, David did such a good job, the Preds got into the playoffs year in and year you’re out, that you’re using those draft choices to add players at the deadline. When you’re drafting players, you get a young player and you need that extra piece to get in the playoffs or to add to it, those players sort of got pushed back a little bit. So I know that we were trying to we’re in a position now where we’ve got some good players that they’re getting older, and Father Time always wins that I’m going to try to leave a a say, a pathway for all a lot of the young players. We have to because that’s going to be our future. We’re trying to create a roster, a future roster that will be very, very competitive with our city, with the with the no state, with the team that treats their players, right? I think we feel like we can be one of those top 10 teams that everybody wants to be, be a part of, and sort of shrink the NHL, if you will. So we’re creating a we’ve got a real long prospect list, adding a number, a number five pick this year we got 523, and 2635 and 55 in the first two
Nestor Aparicio 29:35
rounds. You got to go. Then you got scouting to do you go make that many picks and to be is this the most important day of the year for you, right?
Barry Trotz 29:41
Yeah, it really is. So we need to create a ghost roster, which in the future, and it probably will be for the for the next general manager to step in and be in a great spot. Nashville is is my team. I’ve coached in Washington and coached. The Island. But I’ve had, you know, almost a 20 year history with this team that I want to leave it in a great spot for, you know, my replacement eventually and hopefully, that that parade down. You know, we have a parade every, every day in Nashville. Just have to go on Broadway. I mean, it is, it’s crazy. But I if we win a cup in Nashville, Tennessee, it will be one of the biggest parties ever. You know, I
Nestor Aparicio 30:27
gotta come down and participate again. I’ve been out of hockey too long trots. I mean, I gotta come to, here’s a problem. Now, you’re running the thing, if I, if I come down, I’m not going to see you on a game day, because you’re going to have your game face on. And then I try to come down for like, Ronnie Millsap or something, country in your alley, and you’re like, dude, I’m the general manager to predators. I’m drinking for the fire hose. So, like, I, I don’t know, but I’m glad to have spent this 20 minutes with you, and I love you, and I appreciate you, and I, you know, hope to be there when you go into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and I hope to be there when you raise the Stanley Cup The next time. But I was there the last time, the first time. We had a lot of fun with that. We did have a lot of fun with that, didn’t
8Barry Trotz 31:02
we? I was exhausted after that.
Nestor Aparicio 31:06
Oh, well, listen, you’re exhausted right now trying to win. So I
Barry Trotz 31:09
was, I was exhausted after we won the cup, and then we had about a week of, I’ll say, a lot of refreshments, and then a lot of sleep. So there’s nothing like it. The best thing in the world is honest. Honestly. I if you win a Stanley Cup, you get to share it with everybody, everybody who’s important in your life, and you’re very important in my life. And we sort of grew up together, cut our teeth. You as a young reporter, me as a young coach, you make me cry. Don’t do it. So as we as we age, the memories are really what matters, and we’ve created some great ones together.
Nestor Aparicio 31:47
8Well, if you win another Stanley Cup, I was there the last time he wants I guess I have to come along for the ride. Barry Trotz is here. He’s still doing it down there in Nashville. So all you folks, I’m going to Nashville. We’re going to go have a good time, go to the Ryman. We’re gonna do the Opry. Oh, I still have not been to the grand old Opry, so let’s put that on my that’s something I the black crows played there a couple months ago. I almost came down for that, that the opry is gonna be next time I come in, I’m gonna do that. All right,
Barry Trotz 32:12
I’ll tell you what the rhyme. If you can see one of those great acts in the Ryman thing. I
Nestor Aparicio 32:16
saw Brian Adams at the Ryman. I can’t do better than that. Yeah, no,
Barry Trotz 32:20
there’s some, there’s some great I saw Bob Dylan in the in the rhyme, and it was fantastic. I
8Nestor Aparicio 32:25
forget how connected you are that if I really want to do something, Dan, if I wanted to see Taylor Swift in Nashville, I bet, I bet I, I bet I got a guy, I better know a guy. No,
Barry Trotz 32:35
I know a guy. There’s a guy. I know a guy who knows a guy, yeah, or I’m the guy I don’t know.
Nestor Aparicio 32:41
All right. All right. Shake it off. Shake off last year. Go make a bunch of draft picks. Go win the cup, and I’ll be there to ride your coattails. Barry Trotz, my friend, future Hall of Famer, running things down in Nashville, Tennessee. I am Nestor. We are W N, S T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Fang fingers, from Baltimore to Nashville. Stay with us. You.
