Barry Trotz was named the first head coach of the Nashville Predators in August of 1997. In his three years in Nashville, Trotz has helped build one of the most successful expansion franchises, both on and off the ice, winning 66 games in two-plus seasons. As you will read below, Trotz knows exactly the way he wants his team to play, although he still doesn't have the talent to do it every night.

How do the Nashville Predators play? You can judge for yourself, but I think we try and play an up-tempo, in-your-face style with a hard forecheck -- a pack mentality. We use pressure and speed to create turnovers.

	Barry Trotz might be yelling here, but he's pleased with his team thus far.

When we play Philly on Tuesday, the Flyers will have John LeClair and more high-end skill guys. Now, we can bring one or two guys on the forecheck and do what we call a hard trap. We don't trap in the neutral zone because we want to always be going forward, not backward. We call it reloading. But there's no question that when we get possession of the puck in the offensive zone, we let our guys go.

In today's game, most teams try and pressure opponents with two guys. When I was in Minnesota recently for a game against the Wild, they asked me about a lot of this stuff because they have a new team there. But I told them we were a new team in a nontraditional market, unlike Minnesota. We knew we weren't going to get a lot of high-end skill guys, but we didn't want to be big and slow and back off. We wanted to put a quick, exciting product on the ice for the Nashville fans. If people were going to see hockey for the first time and see Detroit and St. Louis, we felt that a very conservative team approach might not be aesthetically pleasing to our new fans.

Three years later, the question is whether we are now good enough to dictate our style or do we still adapt to our opponents? The answer is that we are able to dictate with some teams, but not all. The West is so top-heavy with talented teams, but we've actually had some success against teams like Dallas and Detroit.

Put it this way, in our first season, we were getting outshot like 40-20 and great goaltending might get us a win. Last season, we tightened the gap to around 32-25, and this year, we're fairly even in shots. The interesting part of that is we've actually gotten younger as a team in each successive season. We roll out four lines on a consistent basis, and if we're skating hard and there are few penalties, everyone on the team should get between 14-18 minutes of ice time. That puts us in a good position to win hockey games.

But it's tough in the Western Conference. We still don't match up talent-wise with a lot of teams, but we have a strong work ethic and good speed. In the final analysis, we're sort of taking baby steps, but we have sort of a five-year plan, and I think we're on track.

Barry Trotz is the first and only head coach of the Nashville Predators.