Photo: Sporting News

The Washington Capitals announced on Monday afternoon that head coach Barry Trotz has resigned and will not be back with the team. 

After coaching for 15 years with the Nashville Predators, Trotz succeeded Adam Oates as head coach in 2014. He has coached the past four seasons with the team, going 205-89-34, good for a .677 point percentage. Trotz won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 2015-16 and guided the Capitals to consecutive Presidents’ Trophies in 2015-16 and 2016-17. He led the Capitals to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup this past season and three consecutive Metropolitan Division titles.

In his career, Trotz went 762-568-60 with the Predators and Capitals, good for a .564 points percentage. He coached his 1500th game in the NHL on February 17 against the Chicago Blackhawks and became the fifth coach in league history to reach the milestone.

Trotz statement: pic.twitter.com/RwI1Q5pmwm

— NoVa Caps (@NoVa_Caps) June 18, 2018

Trotz will become a free agent on July 1 and the New York Islanders are the only other team without a head coach. He also has the option to retire after a 19-year coaching career. The Capitals will have to give permission to other teams that want to sign him because a two-year contract extension somewhere around $2 million already kicked in when the team won the Stanley Cup but, “as coaches’ contracts have exploded in value, it was below the market.,” according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Freidman. The two sides tried to negotiate an extension but could not agree to terms.

Barry Trotz had a clause in his contract where if he won the Stanley Cup he could accept a two-year extension with a $300k bump in salary. Obviously since he was only making $1.5M, low by today’s NHL coach’s standards, a $1.8-million salary doesn’t cut it. So Trotz stepped down.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) June 18, 2018

The Caps view of this is basically that he agreed to this and negotiated this arrangement four years ago, so he’s not honoring his end of the deal.

— Isabelle Khurshudyan (@ikhurshudyan) June 18, 2018

Trotz becomes the fifth coach in NHL history who didn’t return to their team after they won the Stanley Cup the year before.

You can now add Barry Trotz’s name to this list. Considering how few men are on it, his decision to step away from the Capitals is stunning. pic.twitter.com/7JLNMhGWSN

— Emily Kaplan (@emilymkaplan) June 18, 2018

Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan will talk to the media at 6 PM.

From Capitals’ Release:

Barry Trotz informed the organization today of his decision to resign as head coach of the Washington Capitals. We are obviously disappointed by Barry’s decision, but would like to thank Barry for all his efforts the past four years and for helping bring the Stanley Cup to Washington. Barry is a man of high character and integrity and we are grateful for his leadership and for all that he has done for our franchise.

By Harrison Brown

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A post shared by NoVa Caps (@nova_caps) on Jun 10, 2018 at 12:59pm PDT