Poile is soft-spoken, with a gambler’s spirit
General manager has lived through all the upheaval and uncertainty in Nashville
On the day he accepted the job as general manager of the Nashville Predators, David Poile called his dad.
He was considering two significant offers: one with the expansion team Predators in a non-traditional hockey market, the other with the Toronto Maple Leafs, in the loudest, most vibrant market in the NHL.
Poile interviewed with then-Maple Leafs president Ken Dryden for 12 hours and went to dinner with MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum in Toronto.
“In my mind, I thought I was there,” Poile said. “Larry Tanenbaum had some business to take care of and he asked me if I could stay over another day in Toronto and we’ll take this up again Monday. I decided to go home to Washington, and that’s when Jack Diller, (the first president of the Predators), called me again.”
Poile told Diller he was going to get offered another job.
“Do you want this job or not?” Diller asked him. Poile hung up and called his father.
“Before I could get anything out, he said: ‘Toronto, great. That’s just great.’ ”
It wasn’t Toronto.
“I said, ‘No dad, Nashville.’ He said: ‘Whaaat?’ I said, ‘No dad, Nashville.’
“I wasn’t thinking this at the time, but maybe I wanted to be like my dad. (Hall of famer Bud Poile) started two teams in Philadelphia and Vancouver. Maybe I was thinking that.”
This is almost the ultimate for Poile, the Stanley Cup final moving to Nashville after all these years and all the tumult.
“I don’t know if I was made for the big market,” he said. “This is home.”
This is home after original owner Craig Leopold left to become owner of the Minnesota Wild. This is home after Canadian Jim Balsillie tried to overpay for the Predators with the hopes of moving the team to Hamilton.
This is home after William (Boots) Del Biaggio bought a percentage of Predators ownership, hoping to parlay that into majority ownership of an NHL team, before it was determined Del Biaggio used phoney documents to bilk banks out of US$48 million and went to jail.
Poile has lived through all of it, blending in with the woodwork. Now the city has Stanley Cup fever. Now the Bridgestone Arena, where once upon a time they announced offsides to educate fans, is the loudest, most spirited rink in the NHL.
What Poile has been for most of the past 35 years — the last 19 with Nashville — is a staunch, effective and efficient general manager, with a gambler’s spirit that belies his personality. When he took over the moribund Washington Capitals in 1982, he almost immediately made a giant deal to bring Rod Langway to the U.S. capital. All Langway did in Washington was win the Norris Trophy twice during a Hall of Fame career. Poile’s reputation was built on the blockbuster.
“It’s not really in my nature to take risks,” Poile said. “I don’t do it in any other part of my life.” Then he takes them.
Poile traded 50-point forward Martin Erat to Washington for terrific young forward Filip Forsberg, maybe the biggest steal of his career. Forsberg is the Predators’ most explosive forward. Erat is no longer in the NHL.
Just last summer, Poile was in Buffalo for the NHL draft when he happened to be sitting beside Montreal GM Marc Bergevin at the general managers’ meetings. He knew what the rumours were: That Montreal might be taking offers on P.K. Subban.
“I said to Marc, ‘I’ve been reading all this stuff. Are you trading this guy or not trading this guy?’”
Poile knew he couldn’t trade for Subban and keep Shea Weber, whom he had built his franchise around. He didn’t have the budget for that.
“That’s what I call the big gulp moment for both of us. We spoke a little bit at the draft and we both went home and we gulped some more.
“Trading Weber, it was emotional. This wasn’t your typical trade. This was a trade made at the ownership level. We had to know if we trade Shea Weber, how is this going to affect our season ticket base, how is it going to affect our locker-room, who is going to be our new captain? There’s a ton of things to think about and it’s risky.”
The first home Stanley Cup final game in franchise history will be played Saturday. Poile wondered if this day would ever come: He has been in the NHL more than 40 years. This is his first final. “This is personal,” said Poile, who lost sight in one eye after accidentally being hit with a puck in 2013, but never lost his vision for building a franchise. “This means so much to me.”
Poile began work on building the franchise in 1997, one year before the Predators’ first season. Has he ever regretted turning down the Leafs, even having lived through so much franchise and ownership instability?
“Not once,” he said. “This is where I belong.”