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Monday, 19 October, 1998
Trotz pinching himself
The walk will take only a few seconds, but the reality is it has taken him a lifetime to get this far.
On the expansion roster of players nobody wanted is a coach hardly anyone has heard of.
Mention the name Barry Trotz to most hockey fans and you get one of those quizzical looks, usually followed by the words "Never heard of him.''
In Nashville, it doesn't matter. Never heard of him is the name of every NHL player there. But for Trotz, this night, this job, this season, is a special opportunity, an opportunity for which he is most grateful.
"Sometimes it blows me away, being in the NHL,'' Trotz said the other day. "I'm 36 years old and when I look back just 10 years ago, to think that I'm in the NHL. You grow up in Canada thinking you're hopefully going to be coaching the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens and teams that you have seen on TV growing up. But here I am in Nashville, Tennessee, a rookie coach of an expansion team, in a non-traditional hockey market.
"You think about challenges, this is a challenge.''
This is nothing new for Trotz.
He was too small to play junior hockey, the critics said, but lasted three years with the Regina Pats at a time when playing in the Western Hockey League meant fighting for your existence on a nightly basis. He moved from there to the University of Manitoba, to a coaching position with a tier-two team in his home town of Dauphin, to a scouting position with the Washington Capitals, to an assistant coaching position in the American Hockey League, to a minor-league head-coaching appointment. To tonight. Maple Leaf Gardens. The building he watched on television. The place he always wanted to be.
Trotz caught the eye of the late Jack Button in the early 1980s, not because he played the game so well but because he played it so hard. Button, who for years was David Poile's right-hand man with the Capitals, invited Trotz to training camp in 1982.
On the first day of camp, Trotz thanked Button earnestly for the opportunity he didn't believe ever would come his way.
Trotz said Button responded with outright honesty: "You ain't going to make this team, son. The only reason you're here is because you're a competitive S.O.B. One of the reasons I think you're going to be all right is that you might be a helluva minor-league leader and you might be a good coach some day.''
Trotz never did turn out to be a minor-league leader as a player. Whether he becomes a good coach some day, that is still a matter to be determined.
But there is something to the fit of Trotz and Nashville, an expansion city, with expansion players and a rookie coach. There is a comfort there that somehow seems right, even a strange connection and friendship to Garth Brooks, the country music legend, who is a much beloved figure in Nashville.
Trotz spent the past several seasons coaching in Portland, Maine, the Capitals' No. 1 minor-league affiliate. One night at the arena, Trotz wandered into the team's weight room and thought he saw a figure in the dark. Startled, he quickly turned on the lights, only to find a life-size image of John Wayne staring him in the face.
Behind the image were two musicians working out: They were the opening act for Garth Brooks, who was playing at the building in Portland. They started telling Trotz how much they liked hockey and how they would like to play after the concert. Trotz arranged for the ice time and whatever equipment was necessary.
Trotz told the musicians he had used lyrics from Brooks' song The Dance in an inspirational letter to his championship team the previous season. "Yes, my life is better left to chance ... I could have missed the pain but I would have had to miss the dance'' were the words he used.
"The next day at his show, we met,'' Trotz said. "We all played hockey that night till about 3 in the morning. Now they like to play hockey after all their shows and for a while I was calling around to the rinks where I knew people, getting them to arrange their ice time. Since that first meeting with Garth, we've just maintained the friendship. He's not here much, he's always on the road but we hear from each other from time to time. He loves hockey, I mean he really loves hockey. He's not much of a skater, but he's a good athlete. I think he'd be a power forward, he likes to bang and be aggressive. I marvel at his enthusiasm and his effort.''
Just before the season, Brooks came to Trotz's new Nashville home for a barbecue.
"He treats you like you're the star," Trotz said. He's really a remarkable guy."
The qualities Trotz sees in Brooks are the same kind of qualities he hopes to see from his expansion players in Nashville. More than anything, he wants enthusiasm and effort.
PASSIONATE
"I have this mentality that if you knock me down, I'm going to get up and if you knock me down again, I'm still going to get up,'' Trotz said. "That's how I coach. I have a passion for the game. I don't know anything else. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't in this business. This is my life. I'm a career coach. What you are going to get from me is my heart and soul.''
"Barry is an overachiever and he has always been one,'' David Poile, the Predators general manager, said. "An expansion team is about giving people a chance. This is his chance.''
A chance that often doesn't last long. How long did Bep Guidolin or Wren Blair or Phil Goyette or Bernie Geoffrion or George Sullivan or Hay Laycoe or Jim Anderson or George Kingston last?
Barry Trotz knows the odds of survival are against him. With expansion teams they always are. "This is where I am,'' he said. Tonight, Maple Leaf Gardens, the big stage.
"It has taken a long time to get here.''
He has no intention of leaving soon.
