Poile’s career defined by risk and reward
Predators GM turned down Leafs in favour of building a mean, lean Stanley Cup-vying expansion team
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 earlier in the day. One with the expansion team Predators in a non-traditional hockey market. The other with the Toronto Maple Leafs, in the loudest, most vibrant, noisiest market in the National Hockey League.
Poile had interviewed with Ken Dryden for 12 hours and gone to dinner with Larry Tanenbaum and his family in Toronto. “In my mind, I thought I was there,” said Poile.
“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 (first president of Predators) called me again.”
“I’m going to get offered another job,” Poile told Diller.
“Do you want this job or not?” asked Diller.
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. He (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, even while trailing after two games. “I don’t know if I was made for the big market,” he said. “This is home.”
This is home after the 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 a Save-The-Predators weekend was supposed to sell tickets, build community feel.
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 that Del Biaggio used phoney documents to bilk banks out of $48 million. He 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 offside to educate the fans, is the loudest, most spirited rink in the NHL.
“Nashville should be on your bucket list,” said Poile. He was talking about the great country music town, not necessarily the hockey.
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 managed in Washington was to win the Norris Trophy twice, go on to a Hall of Fame career. Poile’s reputation was built on the blockbuster.
“It’s not really in my nature to take risks,” said Poile. “I don’t do it in any other part of my life.” And then he takes them. He tells the story on how he ended up with the terrific young forward Filip Forsberg, maybe the biggest steal of his career.
“Martin Erat called and said, I’d like to talk to you,” said Poile, “That happened in Edmonton. He said, ‘I need a change, I don’t think we’re going to win here.’ Now as a manager you don’t ever want to hear that from anybody. I tried to talk him out of that for two or three weeks.
“He had a no-trade clause in his contract and I asked him to give me a list of teams he would go to. I called those teams. I told them what I wanted. And Washington called and said yes.
Forsberg is the Predators most explosive forward. Erat is no longer in the NHL.
Even the controversial P.K. Subban deal was typical of the Poile’s understated. He was in Buffalo last summer 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 Subban.
“I said to Marc, ‘I’ve been reading all this stuff. Are you trading this guy or not trading this guy?’”
Then Poile said: “If I was to do this, would you have interest?”
That’s how the conversation began. Poile knew he couldn’t trade for Subban and keep Shea Weber. He didn’t have the budget for that. The deal had to include Weber, whom he had built his franchise around.
“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 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 Stanley Cup Final game in history will be played Saturday night here against Pittsburgh. Honestly, 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 the sight in one eye after accidentally being hit with a puck in 2013, but never lost his vision for franchise building. “This means so much to me.”
Poile began work on building the franchise in 1997, one year before the Preds first season. And 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.”