Barry Trotz’s return to the NHL will fittingly come in Nashville.

The former Islanders coach is expected to serve as the Predators’ general manager, according to Elliotte Friedman. He’ll start immediately but won’t inherit the general manager title until David Poile retires on June 30.

Poile originally hired Trotz as the head coach of Nashville when it was an expansion team in 1997, fired him 15 seasons later and will now hand over the general manager position to him.

Trotz also served as head coach of the Capitals — where he won the Stanley Cup in 2017-18— and the Islanders, with his tenure in Long Island ending in April when Lou Lamoriello fired him. Overall, the 60-year-old has been a head coach for 23 seasons and won 914 regular-season games.

He made the playoffs in three of his first four seasons with the Islanders, but Lamoriello still opted to part ways with Trotz in a surprising move following the 2021-22 season, when they missed the playoffs. Trotz took the 2022-23 season off despite having the opportunity to coach the Jets, his hometown team, and told NHL.com in June that “I’ve got some things personally that I’ve got to take care of.”

“It doesn’t mean I’m not going to coach,” Trotz told NHL.com in the interview. “Just not going to coach right now. I’ve been doing this for 25 straight years and I’ve put a lot of stuff on the back burner and I think it’s time [for a break].”

That pause will end where the roots of his NHL coaching career took shape. Poile, who Friedman reported will remain with the franchise in a consulting role, became the first general manager in NHL history to log 3,000 games in that position — spending time in that position with both the Capitals and Nashville — during the 2022-23 season. 

And in a full-circle twist, the second general manager in the organization’s history also happened to be its first coach.