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The Nashville Tennessean indicates hockey is never far from David Poile’s mind, even during the NHL lockout.

The Predators general manager talks with the team’s scouts, coaches, operations staff and trainers. Although the start of the 2012-13 season is still in limbo, Poile has no other choice.

“We’re in a ‘ready’ mode,” he said, “I guess in its overview, we’re trying to keep ourselves in a ready mode because once we get started, it’s going to be a very short training camp.”

Poile meets weekly with the hockey operations staff.

“We go over, ‘if it starts, this is what we’ll be doing,’ ” Poile said. “We normally talk about on-ice stuff and off-ice stuff and keep people as focused as possible as if we’re going to open in a couple of weeks.”

Head coach Barry Trotz and Poile have come up with a plan on how to proceed with a compressed training camp. When the NHL and the NHLPA eventually agree on a new collective bargaining agreement, teams are likely to get only five-10 days of camp instead of the usual three weeks.

So drills and concepts must be in place because coaches and management will have less time than usual to make decisions about some players. Gone will be the luxury of being able to watch weeks of practices and scrimmages.

“We basically (planned) our training camp, I think it was last Thursday,” Trotz said. “All you do is recalibrate what you had planned for training camp, and you recalibrate it from a longer timeframe to a shorter timeframe.”

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