David Poile was sitting at a bar in a Montreal hotel, sipping on his latest cocktail, wondering what kind of future he might have in hockey.
That was 45 years ago, give or take a day. Jimmy Devellano had just been hired as GM of the Detroit Red Wings. Bob MacMillan was the new GM of the Colorado Rockies. Every job Poile seemed to apply for came back with the same answer. He ordered another drink and kept talking.
“If I don’t get a job in the next year,” he told me that night. “I’m getting out of this sport. I’m going to find another career.”
Not long after that, Poile got the call that changed his life. He was hired as general manager of the rather terrible Washington Capitals. You don’t get GM jobs with good teams. You get hired because the team needs change.
He spent 15 years running the Capitals and running them well and the 25 years after that as GM of the brand new Nashville Predators.
“Not a bad run,” he joked on Friday, after being presented with his Hockey Hall of Fame ring. “Everything but a Stanley Cup.”
His teams played for the Cup in Washington and in Nashville. He won more games than any GM in hockey history. Just not the big one.
The big one for him comes Monday night when he gets inducted to join his late father, Bud, who became a Hall of Famer 34 years ago. The Poiles, the Hall of Fame hockey family. And this weekend is very much about family and hockey circumstance.
Poile drafed hundreds of hockey players in his 40 years as a GM but only one of them — Shea Weber — made it to the Hall. Now they go in together, the first Predators executive alongside the the first Nashville-grown player to be so honoured.
“So many things tie us together,” said Poile, who drafted Weber in the second round in 2003, the kind of pick that exceeds all expecations over time. The Predators needed help on defence. They took Ryan Suter in the first round. They took another defenceman, Kevin Klein, in the second round. With their fourth pick, their third D-man, they took Weber.
“I’m not here if it wasn’t for David Poile,” said Weber.
Ken Hitchcock, the Hall of Fame coach, calls Weber the most underrated player of his generation. He was a defenceman who could do everything.
“He never tired,” said Hitchcock, who had him at two Olympics. “He’d come off, rest 15 seconds and be ready to go again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like him before.
“What’s a special defenceman? A special defenceman plays against the best players on the other team, he plays power play, he plays penalty kill, he plays when you’re up or down a goal. He’s not just a special player. He’s a special guy.
“And what a shot. That’s an Allan MacInnis shot. There haven’t been many like that one.”
Things to know about Weber: While Poile was winning more games than any GM before him, all Weber did was score more goals than any defenceman who played during his 16 seasons.
And when Canada won gold medals at the Olympics in Vancouver and Sochi in 2010 and 2014 — the most recent best-on-best Olympic hockey tournament — Sidney Crosby may have scored the overtime winner in Vancouver and a key goal in the gold-medal game against Sweden, but it was Weber who led Canada in scoring in the two Olympics combined.
Weber’s Olympic numbers: Five goals, seven assists in 13 games. The great Crosby’s Olympic numbers: Five goals, five assists in 13 games.
Did Weber know that?
“No I didn’t,” he said. “But next time I see Sid, I’m going to have one on him.”
He will have another story to tell as well. While Poile lasted about as long as any GM can, Weber lasted in hockey until he had nothing left. Like, nothing left at all.
He played the 2021 Stanley Cup final taped together with the Montreal Canadiens and never played another game after that. What was wrong with Weber?
“What wasn’t hurt is the question?” he said.
He had a torn UCL in his thumb. He had a torn ankle tendon. He had a meniscus ligament injury in his knee. And he tore his groin in the playoffs.
“What else do you want me to tell you? I knew the year before it was coming. My body wasn’t holding up like it used to. My body wasn’t recovering. I couldn’t get up and down the stairs. I knew, this wasn’t going to be good. I got checked out to see if the doctors could do anything. Really, they couldn’t.”
Weber can’t get on the ice and turn now on his skates when he takes his kids out to play.
“He’s badly beaten up,” said Hitchcock. “He’s one of those guys who had farmer strength, the strength you can’t explain, he played the game and never got tired.”
Until he couldn’t play anymore.
It took a lot to bring Weber to his knees in NHL games, but the Hall of Fame managed to do just that. He was on the golf course last June in Kelowna when he got the call informing him of his coming induction.
He fell to his knees, overcome with emotion, unable to play the next hole, his hands in his hair: The Hall of Fame call can do that to you.
It did the same to David Poile, the hockey lifer. It took his breath away. It meant even more when he found out Weber was part of his Hall of Fame class. The GM and his draft pick, together again. Now and forever.
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