NASHVILLE—If you were to read the quote and asked which NHL GM said it, half the men who hold that post would seem like viable possibilities. There’s nothing particularly distinct or noteworthy about it, but the more you mulled the matter-of-fact tone, the unexcitable—yet fundamental—truth of it, the more you’d start to wonder if it came from the mouth that accompanies the league’s most celebrated level head.
“My line this year,” says David Poile, sitting upright in his office chair at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, “is, there are a lot of good teams in the NHL and we’re one of them.”
That largely innocuous sentence is further proof that, if you’re looking for somebody to decorate your bulletin board, Poile still ain’t your man. But as much as his signature characteristics remain unchanged, the same cannot be said of his approach with the Nashville Predators as they prepare to drop the puck on what will be an important season for the franchise in a number of respects.
Poile’s assessment of his team and the league might not generate headlines, but it is absolutely spot on. Nashville is a quality club, as it showed last year by racking up 104 points before losing to the eventual Cup-champion Chicago Blackhawks in the first round of the post-season. And you needn’t look any further than the murderous Central Division the Preds compete in to get a sense of how many other solid squads populate the NHL, specifically in the Western Conference.
Part of the reason Nashville was able to hang with the heavyweights last year is an ongoing reinvention—or at the very least, high-level tinkering—that’s seen the team transition from its meat-and-potatoes past to something that draws a little more from the spice rack.
Poile, who’s been the GM since Day 1 in Nashville, oversaw a long process in which the team constructed a sturdy foundation built on solid goaltending and stingy defence under former coach Barry Trotz. That era of Predators hockey ostensibly ended in the spring of 2012 when the team—after Poile had done more dice-rolling than usual by acquiring mercurial Andrei Kostitsyn and repatriating Alexander Radulov from the KHL that year—clunked out in the second round of the playoffs versus the Arizona Coyotes. (Mind you, not before Kostitsyn and Radulov were suspended by the team for one game in that series versus the Coyotes for, shall we say, burning the midnight oil).
The next two years saw superstar goalie Pekka Rinne struggle with injuries as the team failed to make the playoffs in either season, ultimately costing Trotz—another original Predator—his job behind the bench.
“We needed to make a change,” Poile says reflecting back on that tumultuous time. “We needed to get everybody’s attention to right the ship and we did last year. It was a very good year in a lot of respects.”
While a huge portion of the team’s rebound was based on Rinne’s return and a sparkling defence corps that may feature the NHL’s best tandem in Shea Weber and Roman Josi, it’s impossible to overlook the breath of fresh air that arrived when Poile tabbed Peter Laviolette to coach in Nashville.
One of the beneficiaries of Laviolette’s more up-tempo style last year was rookie Filip Forsberg, who, despite hitting a wall in the second half of the season, provided plenty of evidence he can be a top-six winger for years to come.
This October, a couple other young Swedes are being counted on to help Nashville develop an offensive threat beyond the top two lines. Viktor Arvidsson netted 22 goals and 55 points as a 21-year-old in 70 AHL games last year and, while he’s not the world’s biggest guy at five-foot-nine, he brings a ton of energy and a passion for shooting the puck. Calle Jarnkrok, who just turned 24, was asked to play a more defensive role as a centre last season, but Poile and the coaching staff have let it be known that, after a move to right wing, they’d like to see him get re-acquainted with the scoring touch he demonstrated coming up through the ranks in Sweden and the AHL. That means, in addition to all those flashing signs for honkytonks and bars in downtown Nashville, there will be another kind of signal flashing, one that, historically, didn’t always have a place here.
“We’d like to give him the green light a little bit more to see whether he can put up some numbers for us,” Poile says.
Another player who can expect offensive encouragement is James Neal, now entering his second season with the Preds after a trade with Pittsburgh in the summer of 2014. Neal’s 23 goals in 67 games last year were nothing to sneeze at, but Poile is asking more of a guy who’s demonstrated an elite scoring ability at different times in his career.
“I think he’s capable of scoring in excess of 30 goals,” he says. “I think if you asked him the same thing, he would agree with that.”
Neal might also concur that, until you get a firsthand glimpse at the hockey experience in Nashville, it might be easy to miss how much this Tennessee town has put its arms around the game. The Predators are playing the role of All-Star Game hosts this year, presumably giving the entire league a chance to appreciate the solid—and quite rabid—fanbase that supports this club.
“We’ve seen this go from what was called a non-traditional hockey market to a very good hockey market, a very exciting city to play in where players want to play and fans are arguably as loud and good as any in the league,” Poile says.
Of course, in this showcase year for the franchise, Poile would love to see the team leap forward. Nashville has never advanced beyond the second round of the post-season, which, in a roundabout way, actually makes it more impressive that the organization—starting with Poile—retains such a respected position around the league for the way things hum in Music City.
There’s a lot of pride related to the Preds’ reputation and the way the team has taken root here, and Poile—whose 2,458 games as a GM and 1,198 wins trail only Glen Sather all-time in each category—would love to validate it by delivering the Stanley Cup that has thus far eluded both him, personally, and this city.
“Hockey-wise, it’s all about winning,” Poile says. “We’ve made the playoffs a lot, for us, it’s about winning in the playoffs.
What a year it would be to finally punch through. And what a moment it would be for a man who continues to work on ways to make it happen.
