David Poile called the day he traded Shea Weber, “one of my toughest days I ever had.”
That was June 29, 2016, when Poile, the longtime general manager of the Nashville Predators, dealt Weber to the Montreal Canadiens for P.K. Subban. Eight years later, Poile and Weber will be reunited after they were each elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame on Tuesday.
Poile was elected as a builder for working for 41 years as a GM with the Washington Capitals and Predators, following in the footsteps of his late father, Bud Poile, also a former NHL GM who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990 as a builder. Weber played 16 seasons in the NHL as a defenseman, including the first 11 with Nashville before that trade to Montreal.
“I always tell him he made one bad trade in his career, but he’ll have to live with that one,” Weber joked. “But it’s an honor. He did so much for the game, and when I was in Nashville, he built our teams up and gave us a chance to win every year. It stems, obviously, before that, but with the relationship I had with him and everything we went through, it means a lot.”
Also elected in the player category were former NHL forwards Pavel Datsyuk and Jeremy Roenick, and former United States women's national team forwards Natalie Darwitz and Krissy Wendell-Pohl. NHL senior executive vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell was also elected in the builder category.
The Class of 2024 is scheduled to be inducted on Nov. 11 in Toronto.
Poile was hired as the Predators first GM on July 9, 1997, more than a year before they began play as an NHL expansion team in 1998. He built the team from scratch, and worked there until retiring and handing the GM reins over to former Predators coach Barry Trotz following the 2023 NHL Draft. Poile worked for 15 seasons prior to that as the Capitals GM (1982-1997).
The 74-year-old is the NHL’s all-time leader with 3,075 games as a GM and 1,533 wins. His teams made the playoffs in 29 of his 38 seasons as a GM.
“My dad is in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and he was one of my mentors, for sure, and I Iearned a lot about life and people and the game of hockey from my dad,” Poile said. “There were a lot of things that I tried to emulate from him, and he was always a guy that said that the game is always bigger than any individual and I try to always remember that.”
Poile was GM when the Predators selected Weber in the second round (No. 49) of the 2003 NHL Draft. The 38-year-old played his first 11 seasons with the Predators (2005-2016) and was captain for six seasons before being traded to the Canadiens.
“Shea, definitely in my mind, was one of our greatest, greatest players,” Poile said. “And certainly, along with our coach Barry Trotz and a few other guys, but mainly Shea and maybe Pekka Rinne, those were the guys that would define the Predators hockey, the Predators way and got us to be a competitive team coming out of that expansion situation.”
