Nashville Predators rent Andrew Brunette as coach a day after firing John Hynes

The teaching shuffle in Nashville is full, with Andrew Brunette formally employed because the Predators coach on Wednesday, a bit of over 12 hours after the staff introduced that John Hynes was fired.

The strikes are the primary being made by incoming basic supervisor Barry Trotz and are available about six weeks after the Predators missed the playoffs.

The 49-year-old Brunette spent the previous season as a New Jersey Devils affiliate coach underneath Lindy Ruff and has earlier head-coaching expertise.

He was promoted to interim coach of the Florida Panthers throughout the 2021-22 season and oversaw a staff that set franchise information for wins (58) and factors (122) in claiming the Presidents’ Trophy earlier than being eradicated within the second spherical of the playoffs. Brunette completed second within the Jack Adams Award voting for the NHL’s coach of the 12 months.

He turns into simply the fourth coach within the historical past of a Predators franchise and returns to Nashville, the place Brunette performed for the Trotz-coached staff throughout its inaugural season in 1998-99. Their relationship goes again to 1993-94, when Brunette performed underneath Trotz, who was head coach of the Washington Capitals’ American Hockey League affiliate in Portland, Maine.

“I feel like this is coming full circle for my career – from pulling on the jersey for the first time 25 years ago to returning now to take care of some unfinished business,” Brunette mentioned in an announcement. “It has been awesome to see how this city and its fanbase have grown since I played here and I look forward to continuing the legacy and the culture behind the bench that Barry cultivated that inaugural season.”

Trotz, meantime, has an eye fixed on constructing on the Predators’ youth and offensively expert gamers as he takes over as GM for David Poile, who’s retiring on the finish of June after 26 years overseeing the franchise.

“We want to become more of an offensive team and Andrew specializes on that side of the ice – he lived it as a player, and he coaches it as a coach, Trotz said. “He is as good of an offensive teacher and power-play coach as there is in the game today. He will be great with our young players, and I know, because of his background as a player, he will connect well with our top, skilled players.”

In Florida, Brunette coached a Panthers staff that led the NHL with 337 targets and had the league’s fourth-best power-play unit.

The Predators missed the playoffs for the primary time in 9 years, and the primary underneath Hynes, who took over as coach throughout the 2019-20 season after Peter Laviolette was fired.

Brunette, who’s from Sudbury, Ontario, spent 16 seasons taking part in within the NHL, ending with a one-year stint with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2011-12. He completed with 268 targets and 733 factors in 1,110 profession video games cut up amongst six groups, together with two separate stints in Minnesota. Brunette is one in all 25 gamers chosen within the seventh spherical or later to seem in additional than 1,000 NHL video games.