"David Poile" is the President of Hockey Operations and General Manager of the National Hockey League/NHL's Nashville Predators.

Poile began his career in the NHL as an Administrative Assistant with the then expansion Atlanta Flames in 1972 shortly after graduating from Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts)/Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. At Northeastern, Poile was a successful hockey player, and still holds the record for most career hat tricks with 11. Five years after joining the Flames organization he was named as the assistant general manager.

Poile left the Flames to become the Vice President and General Manager of the Washington Capitals. He served in that capacity for fifteen years. During his time in Washington he was quite successful and the Capitals amassed a 594-454-124 record under his control.

After working in Washington, Poile took the position with the then expansion Nashville Predators. He has proven to make many shrewd moves and has created a competitive team with a limited budget.

More David Poile on Wikipedia.

The perception has been sort of an 'us-against-them' mentality in the NHL for a long period of time. I think this addresses that perception, and builds the idea of a partnership.

We knew what our biggest weakness was. It was something we had talked about going back to last year. We had no argument with the skill of our defense. It certainly is one of the best in the league. But we were missing that size, grit and physical aspect.

Some of the nervousness going into the season is the changes. Why are we a better team? We're a better team because we made the playoffs in 2003-04. But is Danny Markov a good fit in our defense? Who is he going to play with? What are defense pairings going to be because it looks like they are all going to be different than they once were.

Hockey is the ultimate team sport. You have to have all of the pieces working together. My example is I always use is Wayne Gretzky. He would often be in front of the net and get the puck from two guys who were getting the heck pounded out of them in the corner. They were making a lot less than him. They get bloody. Gretzky puts the puck in the net and he gets the glory.

It was just a case of agreeing to disagree. We felt it was in the best interest of both the Capitals and Bobby Carpenter to make a move. He was not totally happy with his treatment by the organization over the last several years.

This is exactly what we dreamed about when we talked about the new CBA and being on a more level playing field. We've seen that already to a certain extent in the free agency period ... The dollars are more evenly spread. These guys now are at least attracted to our markets.

He had a lot of places to go. The fact [is] he chose Nashville, and I think in some regards that's got to be somewhat of a stunner that he chose here instead of going to some other bigger market where he could get more fanfare.