When David Poile telephoned Barry Trotz on Wednesday afternoon, he was hoping to finalize some of the details of Trotz’s upcoming visit to Nashville.
As typically happens in conversations among friends, however, the subject matter drifted. Trotz, the Washington Capitals’ first-year coach, expressed excitement about returning to the place he called home for the better part of two decades. Poile, the Predators’ general manager, wanted to ensure his protégé’s team would be comfortable when it arrived Thursday afternoon.
Then, something peculiar happened. Poile shared with Trotz that Pekka Rinne, one of the league’s best goaltenders this season, “will probably be out for a couple weeks” after injuring a knee the previous night — a diagnosis that hadn’t yet been announced by the team.
Such are the details entrusted between the two men, whose friendship transcends three decades but could have veered sharply after they parted ways last spring. As it turns out, it was for the best: Nashville has 62 points and the best winning percentage in the league, while Washington has won 14 of its last 19 games and picked up a point in all but one.
The past and the present will collide on Friday, when the Capitals face the Predators for the first time this season. Trotz and Poile each expect a packed arena and a “ramped-up” atmosphere, owing partially to the teams’ successes but also the emotions the returns of Trotz and assistant coaches Lane Lambert and Mitch Korn will stir.
“I’m glad David made the move,” Trotz said. “Not necessarily because you’re leaving your family and all that, but it was time. It was time for a new face in Nashville and something of a new challenge for myself as well.”
Poile and Trotz first met in 1982, when Trotz had just wrapped up his career in junior hockey and was trying to earn a spot in the Capitals’ organization. Poile was then the team’s general manager, and intrigued by Trotz’s knowledge of the sport, he would later hire Trotz as a scout, then as an assistant coach for Washington’s minor-league team in Baltimore.
When Poile took over as the general manager in Nashville in 1997, he persuaded Trotz to join him as the team’s coach. Trotz initially thought the club would languish for a few years before moving elsewhere, but together, the two helped build it into a respectable organization.
Trotz guided the Predators to the postseason for the first time in 2004, the franchise’s sixth season, and helped them remain a steady presence in the Western Conference for the better part of the next decade.
Yet last April, after two consecutive seasons out of the playoffs, Poile realized the Predators needed a change behind the bench. Trotz, whose contract was set to expire, was offered a role elsewhere with the team, but he declined, hoping to continue coaching.
Six weeks later, the Capitals — who had missed out on the playoffs for the first time in six years — hired Trotz as their next coach.
“We were able to have some conversations during the season that took place before we actually decided to go in a different direction,” Poile said by telephone this week. “To make a long story short, I think we both knew it was the right thing to do, and it was time to go in a different direction.”
For Trotz, the return to Washington has been fairly smooth. Whereas he noticed shortly after his hiring he would occasionally refer to his new team as Nashville, he hasn’t made that slip in some time.
One night, when the Capitals left Verizon Center after a game and needed to be at Dulles Airport to start a road trip, Trotz realized he didn’t know how to get there. He followed one of his players, left wing Jason Chimera — only to realize that Chimera had to stop at his home to drop off his wife, Sarah.
“The transition was, at first, a little bit difficult because we had uprooted everything, but it’s actually been kind of exciting meeting new people and [exploring] a new area and a new lifestyle,” Trotz said. “Being in the Eastern Conference is a little bit different than the West — all those things. I’ve actually embraced it. It’s been fun. I’ve got some great people that work for us, and a team that I think is embracing what we’re trying to do here.”
The Predators, of course, have been no slouch, either. With Peter Laviolette behind the bench, Rinne returning after missing much of last season because of a hip injury and a pair of former Capitals centers — Filip Forsberg, a first-round pick in 2012, and Mike Ribeiro, who played for the team in 2012-13 — boosting their offense, Nashville is off to its best start in franchise history.
“This doesn’t have that rivalry feel, but the fact is, in the back of your mind, you’re thinking that if you’re going to make the playoffs — and if we’re going to win in the playoff — this could be a team that you could face in the playoffs,” Poile said. “It’s a big game from that standpoint.”
Before then, though, lies the other half of the season — which, for the Capitals, continued on Wednesday night with a game against the Philadelphia Flyers. Earlier that day, Trotz and Poile mentioned the differences between the teams in the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference when Trotz brought up the nationally televised “Rivalry Night” game.
“And [Poile] says, ’Beat the Flyers. I used to hate them,’” Trotz said. “That one was for David from me.”
• Zac Boyer can be reached at zboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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