It happens a lot in the NHL where head coaches fall on the sword first when the team grossly underperforms, and the Nashville Predators had every excuse in the book to follow that trend.
Nashville Predators General Manager Barry Trotz decide to show more patience that most NHL front offices show. He's not only retaining Head Coach Andrew Brunette to start 2025-26, but he's showing just as much confidence as he has ever showed in the young head coach and former NHL player of over 700 points and 1,1000 games.
Brunette overperformed in Year 1 behind the bench for the Predators, and fans like to always point out "well, what if the 18-game point streak never happened? Then what?".
Sorry, but living in whataboutisms isn't a logical argument for me. The fact is, the team did rally for an 18 -game point streak. And not just any 18-game point streak, but wins in 16 of those 18 games. However, I don't want to dwell on a season from two years ago. The focus should be on what we just saw in 2024-25, or Brunette's Year 2.
Brunette is getting the benefit of the doubt that's rare in the NHL
The team underperformed in epic fashion. Preseason analysts were even throwing around the Predators as a sneaky Stanley Cup contender. Just look at all of the preseason standings projections from the most popular analytical models going into last season. The Predators were by far the worst average error, averaging out at a 28-point miss from the model projections, per JFresh Hockey:
So the debate all year long from Predators fans has been how much blame should be shared amongst the players, the head coach and the front office? They all obviously share some portion of the blame, but the one thing on Brunette's side in all of this is basic time. He's had two years as the head coach, one really bad one and one that produced better than expected results. Can you really fire a guy with that small of sample size? Debatable.
Here's a really good clip shared from Braden Gall of 440 Sports showing how Trotz compares Brunette to himself as a young head coach while also saying that Brunette needs to add more tools to his tool belt:
It's everyone's natural instinct in sports to immediately go after the head coach when things go wrong. It's almost like we're just programmed that way. Again, if we were three years into this process then it would be a no-brainer to move on from Brunette, but only two years in and Trotz acknowledging that this is a process, it's not a surprise that he's bringing back Brunette to rectify the failures of 2024-25.
What rubbed me the wrong way from Trotz, which really has nothing to do with Brunette coming back for a Year 3, is how he nonchalantly suggested that the preseason expectations were unrealistic. That is just burying your head in the sand and tryig to build in an excuse. The much more genuine and refreshing answer from Trotz would've been "Yeah, we were awful. All of us from the front office down to the players. We all have to be better, and I'm giving Brunette the benefit of the doubt for one more year to turn the ship around".
You know, that thing called personal accountability. I like Trotz a lot. Always have and still do, but the media availability to go into the offseason leaves me without serious doubts about the direction of this franchise.
As for Brunette, I'm on board with bringing him back for 2025-26 with a serious red line. If this team completely messes the bed again over the first month of the regular season while showing the same shortcomings of last season, Trotz will have to have a quick trigger.
Let's say this happens and Trotz fires Brunette sometime in mid to late November as the team digs themselves into another deep hole in the standings. That's when we could really witness the franchise plunge into the abyss for years to come. Trotz is really betting all of his horses on Brunette being one of the next great, young head coaches in the NHL.
Here's why; if Brunette isn't a future great head coach, then this young core of players that Trotz keeps touting as the future of the franchise are going to have a difficult time growing into consistent NHL players.
What should Trotz's red line be for the Nashville Predators in 2025-26?
Trotz is right to say that next season's success is going to weigh much more heavily on the younger players than it has in the past. We're seeing a gradual changing of the guard in Nashville. Sure, Filip Forsberg, Ryan O'Reilly, Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Roman Josi will still be the veteran leaders at the top, but their peaks are passing them by with the exception of Forsberg.
By bringing Brunette back for another year, Trotz is showing his full faith that Brunette can connect with guys like Fedor Svechkov, Joakim Kemell, Luke Evangelista, Adam Wilsby, Matthew Wood, Justin Barron and many others coming out of the prospect ranks.
Trotz is also probably heavily banking on Juuse Saros to be closer to the Vezina Trophy guy he was the last two seasons, finishing fourth and fifth in the voting. Saros led the NHL in Goals Saved Above Expected just two seasons ago, but saw his save percentage tank to .895, the lowest of his NHL career.
A locked in goalie can overcome a team's shortcomings, but Saros wasn't that superhero this past season. The running joke up until this past season was that Saros was too good of a goalie to ever allow the Predators to land a high draft pick in the NHL lottery. They won the fifth pick, but had the third-best odds to win the top overall pick.
Is Brunette the right head coach to take this young fellas to the next level? This is where a large portion of the fanbase splits off from Trotz and doesn't think so. Many fans I've interacted with think Brunette lost the locker room, and Marchessault's comments about the system not working didn't help Brunette's case.
I got nothing for you other than Trotz clearly sees something in Brunette that the outsiders aren't seeing. Like I said, time is on Brunette's side, or the lack thereof. Two years isn't much to turn around the deeply-rooted problems of this franchise of not developing home-grown talent for years before Brunette ever came along.
Unless the Predators show drastic improvement and become a playoff team in 2025-26, a serious long shot, then I don't see Brunette getting another full season after his third year. The Predators will need to show massive growth from their youth and return to the postseason for me to give Trotz's his credit that he's right about not firing Brunette.
Not impossible, but feels like a fantasy sitting here in early May and a lot of offseason uncertainty to process.