Preds GM Poile pulls out all stops in Nashville
His dad was a Leaf at 18, and at one point the son was offered the keys to the magic kingdom.
But David Poile didn’t want to be Toronto’s top hockey executive back in 1997, no matter how sweet Ken Dryden’s siren song. He felt starting a team in Tennessee from scratch like his father, Bud, had done with expansion operations in Philadelphia and Vancouver was a better bet than trying to take over one of the sport’s most famous, and complicated, teams.
New places, non-hockey places, didn’t scare him. He’d gone to high school in San Francisco back in the turbulent 1960s when his father was running the San Francisco Seals of the old Western Hockey League. So after 15 years of unsuccessfully trying to win a Stanley Cup in the District of Columbia with the Capitals, he headed south to unexplored hockey territory in Nashville.
That was 16 years ago, and the classy Poile’s done a remarkable job, although without a championship or even a Stanley Cup final. Three weeks from now, Music City will host the NHL all-star game, a testament to the determination of Poile and others to keep this hockey story alive in this unusual but vibrant market.
This week, he swung a startling trade to acquire big centre Ryan Johansen from the Columbus Blue Jackets, sacrificing superb young defenceman Seth Jones. Columbus got the sure thing, Nashville got the bigger possibility.
Does Johansen make the Preds a Cup favourite? Is anybody a Cup favourite in an NHL as tightly packed as a subway car at rush hour?
What we do know is this is Poile’s third significant attempt during a season to add an impact offensive player and push the Predators over the top.
Gather ’round as we recall his blockbuster move in February 2007 to acquire aging and battered Peter Forsberg, arguably the best player in the game during his glory years in Colorado. Poile had signed Paul Kariya as an unrestricted free agent two years earlier, but this was a spectacular in-season move.
“Has there ever been a better player traded away at the deadline than Peter Forsberg?” asked Poile at the time.
By then, Forsberg was 33, and after almost two years in Philadelphia, he was headed for unrestricted free agency.
So the Flyers decided to move him. From Nashville, GM Paul Holmgren received youngsters Scottie Upshall and Ryan Parent, as well as a firstround selection in 2007 and a thirdround pick.
Forsberg had 15 points in 17 games down the stretch while the Predators finished with a team record 110 points and looked poised to make a run. But the playoffs came with a matchup against San Jose, and Nashville went out in five games. Forsberg was largely ineffective, and after all the buildup, owner Craig Leipold was so crushed he put the team up for sale.
Five years later, the next chance to bring in a finishing piece came in a different way. Winger Alexander Radulov of the Quebec Remparts junior team had been a first round pick of the Preds in ’04, but with one year still left on his entry level contract bolted back to Russia. This enraged the Preds, Radulov was suspended and the situation became a key test of the relationship between the NHL and the new Kontinental Hockey League.
Four years later, in March 2012, Radulov suddenly declared himself available to return at the conclusion of that year’s KHL season. The player who had walked out on a valid contract was now, possibly, the scoring saviour for a team headed for another 100-plus point season.
Poile swallowed his pride and brought him back. Radulov was by that point a two-time KHL most valuable player and an Olympian, and was only 25 years old.
“As I’ve said, he’s the best player not playing in the NHL,” said Poile at the time.
The Preds did get a little further, beating Detroit in the first round and raising expectations sky high in Nashville. But the second round matchup against the Phoenix Coyotes went badly. Before Game 2, Radulov and teammate Andrei Kostitsyn were spotted out at a Phoenix bar at 5 a.m., breaking curfew and team rules. Both were suspended for Game 3, and the Preds went down in five games.
Forsberg and Radulov, then, were flawed hockey saviours, one because he was well past his prime and the other because, well, the Preds invested twice in a player who burned them twice.
Now comes Johansen, a 23-yearold centre who is widely viewed as the same kind of prototypical big centre as Jonathan Toews, Ryan Getzlaf and Joe Thornton. The fourth overall pick of the 2010 draft, Johansen’s the kind of player that normally doesn’t get traded because they’re so difficult to acquire.
Lord knows Nashville tried. The Preds lost the lottery and the chance to get Vincent Lecavalier in 1998, getting David Legwand instead. Poile tried unsuccessfully to trade up and land Anze Kopitar when he went 11th to L.A. in 2005.
“Today, in my belief, we accomplished something we haven’t been able to do in 18 years of our history, and that’s to acquire a No. 1 centre,” said Poile on Wednesday.
Johansen had a bitter contract dispute with Columbus last year, and the wounds never seemed to heal. Still, he and Brandon Saad and Nick Foligno looked like they might be the most dangerous line in hockey during the pre-season. After the Jackets had won 12 straight to end last year, Johansen certainly wasn’t available for trade in October.
But then it all changed. Head coach Todd Richards was fired, and Johansen was benched and criticized for poor conditioning by new coach John Tortorella. Suddenly, he was available, and perhaps he’ll soar in Nashville like Tyler Seguin has flourished in Dallas.
After 32 years of chasing that elusive Cup, Poile’s still going for it, searching for that missing element.
They’re never easy to find. Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Rogers Sportsnet and a regular contributor to Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column appears here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.