Poile, with most wins by NHL GM, has been steady success story

With a thick cloud of cigar smoke wafting through the air, David Poile sat in a swank room at Toronto's Royal York Hotel feeling confident in what he'd just done.

Less than two weeks into his first job as an NHL general manager, Poile had come to the 1982 Board of Governors meeting feeling a little bit intimidated, he said. But sitting beside Montreal Canadiens GM Irving Grundman, his comfort level quickly grew, so much so that the two men made a trade that took the hockey world by storm.
On Sept. 10, 1982, Poile's Washington Capitals acquired defensemen Rod Langway and Brian Engblom, and forwards Doug Jarvis and Craig Laughlin, from Montreal for defenseman Rick Green and forward Ryan Walter. The deal paid instant dividends.
Related: [Poile sets win record for GM]
To that point, the Capitals had missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs their first eight seasons. After the trade with the Canadiens, Washington reached the postseason 14 consecutive times.
Pleased at the trade he'd just completed, Poile, then 32, called Washington owner Abe Pollin to inform him of the details.
More than 35 years later, Poile recalls Pollin's response.
"You'd better be right," Pollin told his young GM.
The Capitals owner then abruptly hung up, catching Poile off-guard.
"I was expecting something like 'Good job,'" Poile said recently. "But it kind of put me on notice. You are always being evaluated in this job.

"It's certainly a career of 'What have you done for me lately?'"
More than three decades later, Poile has done plenty, including accomplishing something no one else has. When his Nashville Predators defeated the Edmonton Oilers 4-2 on the road Thursday, Poile set an NHL record for victories by a general manager with 1,320, one more than former Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers GM Glen Sather, doing it in 2,685 games.
Poile's journey into the record book isn't about longevity as much as endurance and stability. In a business where personnel turnover is the norm, Poile set the standard for victories by a GM with two organizations.

They weren't ordinary teams, either.
When he took over the Capitals in 1982, there was a legitimate possibility that they would relocate. They didn't.
After he became GM of the expansion Predators in 1997, he spent almost as much time dealing with unstable ownership regimes as he did attempting to build a respectable product on the ice.
Almost twenty years after Poile and NHL hockey arrived in Nashville for the 1998-99 season, the Predators are one of the League's model organizations and are coming off their first appearance in the Stanley Cup Final. Though Nashville lost to the champion Pittsburgh Penguins in six games, the thousands of yellow-and-blue clad fans celebrating the Predators inside and outside of Bridgestone Arena showed how much they had become a staple in Music City.
For Poile, 68, the way he helped the Capitals and Predators survive and eventually thrive when things looked their bleakest is as much a highlight as each of those 1,320 wins.

"In the end, when it comes to this, I'm thinking about all the people I've worked with," Poile said. "I only had five coaches in 35 years. That's probably the thing I'm most proud of. That probably stacks up against anyone in sports. Ever."
During his stint in Washington from 1982-97, he had three coaches: Bryan Murray, Terry Murray and Jim Schoenfeld. In Nashville since 1998, there have been two: Barry Trotz and Peter Laviolette.
Poile's teams have made 24 playoff appearances in 33 seasons: 14 by Washington, 10 by Nashville. He's never been afraid to make bold moves either, trading for Langway and Dale Hunter in Washington, and Peter Forsberg and P.K. Subban in Nashville. It's an impressive resume, one that helped him win the NHL General Manager of the Year Award in 2017.
Even with all this success, Poile will not relax and enjoy his moment in the spotlight. That's not him.
A prime example of that took place after the Predators acquired forward Ryan Hartman and a fifth-round pick in the 2018 NHL Draft from the Chicago Blackhawks for a first-round and fourth-round pick in 2018 and forward prospect Victor Ejdsell on Monday, the day of the NHL Trade Deadline. With the pressure of the deadline finally gone, the assumption might have been that Poile got a good night's sleep.

"Maybe a little bit," he said. "But I kept thinking of those words: 'You had better be right.'"
It was 12,953 days between the Langway and the Hartman trades.
"Records, trades, whatever, I always hear those words, no matter how long it's been," he said with a laugh. "Yes, I had better be right. That's what pushes me."
All the way into the record book.
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Poile's first office as an NHL executive wasn't inside a spiffy glass tower or a sprawling complex in the suburbs.
It was in a trailer in a downtown Atlanta parking lot, just off Peachtree St.
When the expansion Vancouver Canucks came into the NHL in 1970, David's father, Bud, was named their first GM. Not long afterward, David, a noted scorer and former captain with Northeastern University, was invited to Canucks camp.
The result: his dad's team cut him.
"That's hockey," David said with a laugh. "That probably was a good indication my life in hockey wouldn't be on the ice."
In 1972, the expansion Atlanta Flames hired Cliff Fletcher as general manager. Fletcher knew Bud, a player, coach and executive who would be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990.
Impressed with David's knowledge of the game and attention to detail, Fletcher hired him as Atlanta's assistant GM. Among his initial duties: running a contest to name the team. Pretty soon, he was negotiating contracts and running the farm team.

"I'd have to say, looking back, it was the favorite job I've ever had," Poile said.
Why?
"Because I'd run into Cliff's office and say, 'We should trade this guy, we should trade that guy.' Those were easy things for me to say because I didn't have to make the final decisions. Cliff did.
"I wasn't the one that had to be right. Cliff was."
The Fletcher-Poile relationship lasted 10 years.
"I'm so proud of him," said Fletcher, a senior adviser for the Toronto Maple Leafs. "To have an accomplishment like this, it shows you not only longevity, but how much he's been trusted by ownership over the years.
"David did everything for me. You have to remember: There were no huge hockey departments at that time. There was myself, David, a coach, two trainers and a PR guy. That was it."
By 1982, the Flames had relocated to Calgary when Fletcher got a call from Pollin inquiring about Poile. Soon afterward, Poile was hired as the Capitals GM.
"He didn't waste any time either," Fletcher said. "He wasn't even on the job two weeks and he made that Langway trade. That took a lot of guts and confidence.
"When I saw that, I knew he was going to be a successful general manager. And he certainly has been that."
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Laughlin did a double take when he first was informed of the trade.
"I'm going where? Where?" he said in disbelief on that September day in 1982 after being told he was heading to Washington.
"You have to understand, it was a pretty bleak scene there," Laughlin said recently. "No one knew if the team was going to move.
"But David had a plan. It may have been his first GM job but man, did he know what he was doing."
Langway won the Norris Trophy as the League's top defenseman in 1982-83, his first season in Washington, then won it again the next season. At the same time, the Capitals became regulars in the playoffs for more than a decade.
But it wasn't easy. Crowds had been dismal before Poile was hired; the Capitals had never averaged more than 12,000 fans per game in a season.
"For Washington, I came in when the franchise was on life support," Poile said. "During that summer they had the 'Save the Caps' campaign. It wasn't until just before they hired me that they announced they'd stay in Washington because they'd sold enough season tickets, sponsorships and [had enough] overall support.
"To that point, the franchise had been in limbo. The fact that they'd hired me presented a great opportunity to take that franchise to a new level. They hadn't been to the playoffs in eight years."
Washington's average attendance was 12,376 in Poile's first season, and more than 14,000 in each of his final 13 seasons there, peaking at 17,251 in 1989-90.

One of Poile's first goals was to raise the spirits of the staff, especially in the business and marketing departments.
"I told them they were doing a great job -- it was the hockey department that had to pick it up," Poile said. "We ended up making the playoffs that year and for 14 consecutive years."
Laughlin said one of Poile's initial plans was to get Capitals players to live permanently in the Washington area, where they could be ingrained into the fabric of the community. That was the case for Laughlin, now a broadcaster for the Capitals; he still lives in the region.
"David had a vision," Laughlin said.
Poile's instincts also served him well in 1989 when he hired a 24-year-old named Doug Armstrong to work on the business side of the organization.
"I'll always thank David for helping me get into the business," said Armstrong, the St. Louis Blues GM. "He knew I was interested in the hockey side too, so he always found ways to let me help out with that."
After one year with the Capitals, Armstrong was hired by the Minnesota North Stars for an entry-level position in the hockey department.
"Now here I am, all these years later, talking trade with the guy in David who gave me such a great opportunity," Armstrong said. "He's full worth for his accomplishment."
The Poile era in Washington came to an end after the Capitals failed to make the playoffs for the first time on his watch in 1996-97. His contract ran out after that season, but his accomplishments would not be forgotten, including a record of 594-454-132 (ties) in 1,180 games.
"He helped save NHL hockey in Washington," Laughlin said. "No one can debate that."

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Ray Shero couldn't help himself.
After being named GM of the expansion Predators in 1998, Poile soon named Shero assistant GM. In that job until 2006, Shero would be beckoned almost every day by Poile to go to lunch nearby in downtown Nashville.
That's when the grilling would start.
"He'd ask me, 'Have you called this guy? Did you check on this?' He knew every detail of what I was supposed to do even more than I did," Shero, GM of the New Jersey Devils, recalled with a chuckle.
"He was so detailed. And he kept everything documented in a notebook in his office."
One day, after asking Shero the usual barrage of questions, Poile changed his routine when he returned from their lunch: Instead of going straight to his office, Poile stopped in the men's room.
This was Shero's chance.
"I saw my opportunity, so I ran into his office and took a look at his notebook before he came in," Shero said, laughing. "Sure enough, every task I had to do was in there. There were a couple things I didn't even remember I was supposed to do. But he did. And it was written down in there.
"That's David. That's one of the reasons he's so great at what he does. He leaves no stone unturned.
"I learned so much from him. That's why it's so great to see him get this record for wins. He's earned every bit of it."
Much like his experience in Washington, there were plenty of growing pains in Nashville. Poile found a fan base that was primarily uneducated in hockey and a business community that could be quite skeptical.

"In Nashville you come to a nontraditional hockey market," said Poile, whose team has sold out 93 consecutive home games and last season sold out all 41 in the regular season for the first time. "I had my ideas, my vision -- and now it's become a part of the fabric. We sell out every game, youth hockey has grown.
"It didn't happen overnight. We went through three different ownership groups. The latest one, which is mostly local, the business side and hockey side have been in sync the past six or seven years. It hasn't always been that way."
It is now, thanks in large part to Poile, whose record in Nashville is 726-574-145 (60 ties) in 1,505 games. And with the addition of Hartman, the Predators are considered one of the favorites to win the Western Conference. They lead the Central Division by six points over the second-place Winnipeg Jets.
But Poile won't let himself think that far ahead. There are too many details to be ironed out, too many games to be won. And with each decision comes that reminder.
"You better be right," he said. "That keeps coming up."
Told he's been right enough over his 35-plus years at the job to become the NHL's leader in GM victories, he finally took time to acknowledge the accomplishment.
"It's hard to reflect sometimes," he said. "I do know it's a big number.
"I will say this. For what the game has given me, it's been an honor."