At his end-of-season media availability on May 5, Nashville Predators general manager Barry Trotz acknowledged that the 2024-25 season was a failure from the management side down to the players and coaches.

But by the end of his remarks, which lasted about an hour, he held steadfast that the roster and coaching staff he built — including Andrew Brunette, who will remain the coach for 2025-26 — can put a disappointing season behind them and return to being competitive quickly.

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“We’ve got good players. We’ve got good people. We didn’t miss on that at all,” Trotz said at Bridgestone Arena.

Although there are going to be some adjustments to the roster during the summer — Trotz alluded to making a “hockey trade” — it’s likely that the 2025-26 roster looks very similar to this season’s.

The decision to hold together a roster and coaching staff of a team that ended with a 30-44-8 record and seventh-place finish in the Central Division sets Trotz up for some major questions about his own job security down the road. But right now, he has faith Brunette, 51, can flip the script.

Why Barry Trotz decided to keep Andrew Brunette as Predators coach

Explaining his decision to keep Brunette, Trotz relied upon his own 23-year coaching experience.

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“Andrew Brunette is a good young coach,” he said. “He had a tough situation this year in terms of our team, our makeup, how we came together or didn’t come together. He needs to add a lot of tools to his tool belt. But I think I was that guy. I was Andrew Brunette, way back when. I thought I had a lot of tools in my tool belt. Then you find out you have to add a couple more.”

When Trotz was hired as the Predators franchise’s first coach in 1997, he was 35, and it took six seasons for him to make the playoffs. It took another six seasons to win a round in the playoffs, then another seven to win a Stanley Cup, which he did with the Washington Capitals in 2018.

Patience, Trotz said, is the key to developing a good young coach.

“Just like a good young player, you stick with Andrew Brunette just like a young player. We could have (done) the easy thing, make a change in the year and get a bump . . . but I didn’t do that,” he said. “I believe in developing people. I believe he’s a good young coach, a good young hockey mind, and (Brunette) is going to work hard to find the solution.”

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Brunette will be entering his fourth season as an NHL head coach, his third with the Predators. He has a combined 128-92-19 record in the regular season and a 6-10 record in the playoffs.

What Trotz wants Brunette to improve in his third year as Predators coach

From a statistical standpoint, the Predators have a lot to improve. They ranked 31st in goals scored per game (2.59), 27th in goals allowed per game (3.34), 32nd in 5-on-5 shooting percentage (7.1%) and 30th in 5-on-5 save percentage (89.9%).

Trotz has asked Brunette to make adjustments to his system, but also to his coaching personality, saying that Brunette can be “too nice.”

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“Sometimes we’re all too nice,” Trotz said. “But when I don’t have to be a nice guy, I don’t have any problem with that.”

When the season was teetering early on, Trotz suggested Brunette lacked the fire needed to call out certain players — something Trotz called “the accountability factor.” That’s something he would like to see added to Brunette’s coaching “tool belt.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a player who’s played 600 games or a player who’s played six, there should be an accountability factor,” Trotz said. “Just making sure we are all playing the right way all the time, I didn’t think we did enough of that.”

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Alex Daugherty is the Predators beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Alex at jdaugherty@gannett.com. Follow Alex on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @alexdaugherty1. Also check out our Predators exclusive Instagram page @tennessean_preds.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why GM Barry Trotz is keeping Andrew Brunette as Predators coach