Trotz led the Pirates to an AHL Calder Cup championship in 1994 and now will have him name on the Stanley Cup
Andrew Brunette watched on television Thursday night as Alex Ovechkin handed the Stanley Cup to Washington Capitals Coach Barry Trotz, who lifted it high above his head.
“I’m jealous,” said Brunette, the assistant general manager of the Minnesota Wild.
Maybe. But he’s also elated for his former coach, whose contract expires on July 1.
“I’m as happy as he is to see him win, for everything he did for guys like me and Kent Hulst and Olie Kolzig, for all the people he affected,” said Brunette. “He made us all better people.
“For some reason, he got the knock of a guy who couldn’t win, which was not the reality for the people who knew him. It was justification for me, and I’m sure him, to see him hoist the Cup.”
The Stanley Cup is the first for Trotz, who has been an NHL head coach for the past 20 years. But, unlike the Capitals, it’s not his first title.
When he was coaching the defunct Portland Pirates in their first season, they won a Calder Cup championship on May 29,1994. That would be the lone title for the Pirates – then affiliated with the Capitals – before they left for Springfield in 2016. Trotz wasn’t the only former Pirate to celebrate: Olie Kolzig, the MVP of the 1994 Calder Cup playoffs, is on Washington’s staff as a goalie coach.
On Friday, Trotz, 55, was remembered by some former players as a players coach who not only got them to play hard, but to become better men.
“He was hard, honest, fair and he was caring,” said Brunette, who was one of the Pirates’ greatest scoring forwards. “You could walk in and talk to him at any time. Sometimes he’d say, ‘Let’s go grab a coffee.’
“He loves to talk, and he loved to listen. He was hard on you, but you knew he cared for you.”
Kevin Kaminski, perhaps the most popular Pirates player in their 23 seasons, said Trotz knew how to get the best out of everyone, whether it was the star player or the backup goalie.
“He made it fun and it was always a great day to go to the rink in Portland,” said Kaminski, now the coach of the junior hockey Fresno Monsters of the Western States Hockey League. “He dangled the carrot in front of us all the time, that was his way of pushing us.”
Brunette and Kaminski credited Trotz with helping them to the NHL. Brunette played 1,110 NHL games with six teams, scoring 268 goals and 465 games in his career. Kaminski played in 139 NHL games.
“He really believed in me,” said Kaminski, a tough, physical forward. “He put me on the power play, he put me on penalty killing, in all different situations… I always took pride in being a two-way player. He saw my assets and let me use them. And when you look at my numbers in Portland, I think that’s where I really thrived.”
Brunette was not a gifted skater but had great hands and could handle himself in tight situations. He credited Trotz and Paul Gardner, his assistant in Portland and later Nashville, with making him a better player.
“They believed in me when I’m not sure many other people would have believed in me,” said Brunette.
Trotz left the Pirates after their fourth season to become the head coach of the expansion Nashville Predators in 1997. He’s been in the NHL since, joining the Capitals in 2014, just over a month after he was fired by Nashville. The Capitals didn’t make it past the second round of the playoffs in his first three seasons and there was speculation that he would be gone if that didn’t change this year.
“To me, he looked really relaxed, at ease with himself, through the whole playoffs,” said Brunette. “I never saw any stress on him, unlike the past.”
After the Capitals lost the first two games – at home – to Columbus in the opening round of the playoffs, it looked bad. But Trotz told reporters Thursday that he had a conversation with Ovechkin the next day. “I said we’re winning tomorrow and we’re winning the Cup together,” said Trotz.
The Capitals fell behind in every playoff series this year. Vegas won the opening game of the Stanley Cup finals, Washington the next four. And Trotz got to hoist the Cup.
“I don’t think there’s a better guy it could have happened to,” said Kaminski. “Totally awesome.”
Godfrey Wood, the general manager of the Pirates in their early years, wasn’t surprised.
“I figured it was going to happen at some point,” said Wood. “He knew how to motivate guys, knew how to teach them. And I’ve never seen anyone who could figure out strategy and adjustments like he can.”
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