Well, this is one reason I said that there's no downtime after the Stanley Cup win -- the team had to get busy on next year right away. The team won less than two weeks ago, and already this decision is made, probably partially to let Trotz hit the market and partially to give Reirden closure on what is going to happen. I bet the Caps made a business decision, offering Trotz a raise to, say, $3 million annually, but not the $5 million that the market demands now, figuring they would rather move on with Reirden and pay him less than 1/3 of what they would have had to spend on Trotz.
Or maybe Trotz really had his mind made up ahead of time, DID tell Torts that he wasn't returning, and really meant it from his point of view, not the Caps' point of view.