Barry Trotz continues to be adamant he\u2019s not firing coach Andrew Brunette. The Nashville Predators general manager doesn\u2019t believe the current state of the team should fall only on the coach.<\/p>\n
The Predators (6-11-4) are last in the NHL with 16 points entering their game against the Florida Panthers at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Monday (8 p.m. ET; FDSNSO, SCRIPPS). They finished 30th last season (30-44-8).<\/p>\n
\u201cI need more [expletive] from them,\u201d Trotz told the Tennessean on Monday. \u201cI need more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trotz has said before that Brunette\u2019s job is safe, but he made clear he is putting the blame on the players. Nashville is last in the League in goals per game (2.29) and 27th in goals against (3.48).<\/p>\n
“I’m watching the game systematically,” Trotz said. “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.”<\/p>\n
Brunette is in his third season as Predators coach. They qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2023-24 (47-30-5), losing to the Vancouver Canucks in the Western Conference First Round. Trotz famously canceled a team trip that season to see U2 at Sphere in Las Vegas, after which his players responded with an 18-game point streak. They did not make the playoffs last season.<\/p>\n
“What did I do a couple years ago, when they weren’t playing well? What did I do?” Trotz said. “I said you’re not (expletive) going to see (expletive) U2. Then it became a little of the ‘F-U’ tour, instead of U2. It got them to say, screw you.”<\/p>\n
Trotz said you he should not have to fire the coach to make the team play better.<\/p>\n
“Over the next few weeks, across the League, someone’s getting fired. You’re going to see it, it’s just going to happen,” he said. “And what you’re going to hear out of every (expletive) player is, ‘Oh man, we just underperformed, he was a really good coach, we’ve just got to be better.’ And it takes everybody off the hook. They go, ‘Well, it was him, not us.'”<\/p>\n
Trotz said it comes down to the players giving more, not to firing the coach, including the players getting \u201cgreasier\u201d and making sure they get in front of the net. His two big forward signings after the 2023-24 season — Steven Stamkos<\/a> (four years, $8 million average annual value) and Jonathan Marchessault<\/a> (five years, $5.5 million AAV) \u2013 have scored four goals each this season.<\/p>\n But the GM admitted there may be more action needed — though not firing the coach yet — should things continue going in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n “We’ve got some pieces,\u201d he said. \u201cThe roster is not perfect. Some of that is, a little bit, the roster construction. I’ll take responsibility. I think the coaches take a little bit and I think the players do too. Everything is a partnership.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barry Trotz continues to be adamant he\u2019s not firing coach Andrew Brunette. The Nashville Predators general manager doesn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-304661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}