Flyers Cup architect, hockey lifer Poile remembered on 100th birthday

The late Norman “Bud” Poile remains a cornerstone for the Philadelphia Flyers on this centennial anniversary of his birth on Feb. 10, 1924, nearly two decades after his death in 2005 at age 80.

It was 50 years ago this season that the 1973-74 Flyers won their first of two franchise Stanley Cup championships, the second coming the following season.

The Flyers will be in the spotlight this coming week, playing the New Jersey Devils in the 2024 Navy Federal Credit Union Stadium Series at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, TVAS-D, SN1).

Poile, the father of Nashville Predators retired front-office legend David Poile, helped put them on the ultimate stage, playing a vital role as architect of those two winners, hired by Flyers chairman Ed Snider on May 31, 1966, as the expansion team’s first general manager.

He was tasked with drafting players, and he selected goalie Bernie Parent No. 2 in the 1967 expansion draft, and center Bobby Clarke with the 17th pick in the 1969 NHL Draft, a core pair who would parade the Stanley Cup along Broad Street in consecutive seasons.

Backchecking Bud Poile can’t prevent Montreal Canadiens sniper Maurice Richard from scoring on Toronto goalie Turk Broda during a 1947 game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“Bud was a good, positive person,” Parent recalled. “When you came across him and shook hands, you were happy that you’d met him. His hockey knowledge was awesome.”

Then, with a laugh: “He drafted me, for God’s sake!”

Poile wasn’t at the helm for the Flyers’ back-to-back victories. He had been fired by the team on Dec. 19, 1969, over philosophical differences with Snider and coach Keith Allen, whom he had hired in 1966 following their mid-1950s time together as players with Edmonton of the Western Hockey League.

Two months later, Poile was named GM of the Vancouver Canucks -- the Western league team that would join the NHL in 1970 -- and Rochester of the American Hockey League.

He was out of the NHL but still deeply involved in hockey by the time the Flyers won in 1974, having resigned as Canucks GM in late 1972, ending his term as vice-president in January 1974.

Bud Poile during practice with the 1940s Toronto Maple Leafs, goalie Turk Broda in the background.

Through the decades, Poile has not received the credit he deserves for building the Flyers foundation during his brief tenure, setting the franchise on the path to its historic first championship, then another right behind it.

“We wanted to win so badly,” he said in a 1979 Philadelphia Inquirer interview. “I wanted to be successful because I’d been in the minors so long (16 years) and I wanted to be a big-league general manager. I just wanted to be the best.”

The Poile family has worked a combined 112 years in the game: Bud’s 47 years, David’s 51, and 14 and counting for David’s son, Brian, today the Predators director of hockey operations and an assistant GM to general manager Barry Trotz.

“My dad’s absolute love of the game and everything that came with it has always been incredible to me,” David Poile said Friday from his winter home in Florida. “Wins and losses, players, fans, ownership, building of franchises, there was no task too big or no job that was unimportant for him. And I can never remember him complaining about it.

Future Nashville Predators executive David Poile (left) introduced his father, Bud, for the latter’s Sept. 24, 1990 Hockey Hall of Fame induction in Toronto.

“There are lots of highs and lows when you’re winning and losing every day, but he loved it. We’d have media people to our house. And players. And Central league officials when my dad was commissioner.”

Bud Poile’s remarkable hockey life began in his birthplace of Fort William, Ontario (which merged with Port Arthur to become Thunder Bay). He would work in the front office of many teams in several leagues following a 311-game, 229-point NHL career (107 goals, 122 assists) which began in 1942 with the Toronto Maple Leafs at age 18, the war-depleted League a welcoming sheet of ice for young players.

Through 1950, Poile played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, New York Rangers and Boston Bruins, only the Montreal Canadiens missing from his “Original Six” bingo card.

In fact, Poile’s NHL career was interrupted by three years of service in the war, leaving the Maple Leafs then returning to them in 1945-46; he won the Stanley Cup in 1947, scoring twice against the Canadiens in a six-game Final.

Bud Poile in the sweaters of the 1940s Toronto Maple Leafs and Chicago Black Hawks.

Seven months after that championship win, Poile was packaged by Toronto in a blockbuster with Chicago, shipped to the Black Hawks with fellow forwards Gus Bodnar and Gaye Stewart and defensemen Bob Goldham and Ernie Dickens in exchange for superstar forward Max Bentley and the lesser-known Cy Thomas.

Poile, Bodnar and Stewart, all from the Fort William area, collectively were known as the Flying Forts; that was a tribute to the Flying Fortress, a heavy wartime bomber.

Poile would move on to Detroit and Boston, where his NHL playing days ended in 1950, then to Tulsa of the United States Hockey League, senior-league Glace Bay in Canada’s maritimes and back west, all as a player and manager, ultimately developing a superpower in Edmonton behind the bench and as GM of the Western league’s Flyers.

His team in Edmonton, then a farm club for the Red Wings, was an assembly line for a decade from the early 1950s, sending Detroit future Hall of Fame goalie Glenn Hall, forwards Johnny Bucyk and Norm Ullman and defenseman Al Arbour. At least a dozen WHL Flyers would play at least 100 NHL games during their careers.

Bud Poile in his Chevrolet Fleetline on Toronto’s Spadina Avenue during the mid-1940s.

“Bud was a good teacher, he worked with you,” said Bucyk, who won the Stanley Cup in 1970 and 1972 with the Bruins. “I remember him especially working with the defensemen, telling them they had to keep the shot down low. Keep it about a foot off the ice, he told them. That way you know you’ll get a rebound if the goalie makes the save. Shoot high and the goalie catches it and that’s it.

“I enjoyed playing for Bud. We had a good team and a lot of fun. He wouldn’t tie you down, he gave you room. He wanted you to win but also to enjoy yourself and that’s what we did. I was always relaxed playing for him, he let you play your own type of hockey. And Bud treated us as equals, no matter how great or poor you were.”

Poile would move to San Francisco of the WHL in 1962, doing everything for the Seals but sell popcorn, before the expansion Flyers tapped him as their first GM in 1966.

Bud Poile in the uniforms of the 1940s New York Rangers and Detroit Red Wings.

He held that title in Vancouver onward from the Canucks’ 1970 NHL birth, then stepped into the World Hockey Association in 1974 as vice-president of operations. Poile was hired as commissioner of the Central Hockey League in 1976 and the International Hockey League in 1983.

Countless suitcases worn out, Poile retired from the game in 1989, inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a Builder in 1990. The year before, he was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy for his outstanding service to hockey in the United States.

Poile was enormously popular at every stop, his blue-collar work ethic such that even as coach-GM in Glace Bay he occasionally drove the team bus. Captains of industry and janitors were equals in his eyes.

At his 1990 Hall of Fame induction, his son having introduced him on a Toronto hotel stage, Poile prophetically spoke of labor unrest that would shut down the NHL by lockout for 103 days in 1994-95.

“My dad’s speech stands out to me,” said David Poile, who will turn 74 on Feb. 14. “It was a time when the NHL and NHLPA weren’t getting along. A lot of his speech was devoted to the size of the pie, that there was enough for the players and ownership. He just wanted everybody to be fair.

1952-53 Western Hockey League champion Edmonton Flyers. Bottom row, from left: Jim Uniac, Larry Wilson, Ray Hannigan, manager James Paul, playing-coach Bud Poile, executive G. McDonald, Jim Anderson, Frank O'Grady, Len Haley. Middle row: trainer Billy Morrissey, Larry Zeidel, Glenn Hall, Vic Stasiuk, Al Arbour, Hugh Coflin, Bill Folk, equipment manager I. McLean. Top row: trainer I. Hluschak, Earl Reibel, Earl Johnson, Jack McDonald, Leon Bouchard, trainer B. Edwards.

“I never thought that my dad’s ultimate goal or satisfaction was winning. It was always about developing relationships in the game, which he did a lot of -- as a player, starting two expansion teams, as commissioner of the CHL and IHL. It all just came around to the same thing, his love of the game.”

On today’s centennial anniversary of his father’s birth, David Poile will remember the man in whose footsteps he proudly stepped along his own career road in hockey management.

“I saw him in terms of things that I wanted to emulate,” Poile said. “Dad would be the first to admit that if he had do-overs, he’d handle some things differently. From that standpoint, he was my mentor. I learned a lot from him. We’d talk about how things happened, about relationships. He went through a lot and had all sorts of experience. Who’s done all of that?

“I was always introduced as ‘Bud’s boy,’ until it eventually it got to a point where it was, ‘Here’s David’s dad.’ That’s when I knew I’d done something good.”

Top photo: Bud Poile makes his acceptance speech during his Sept. 24, 1990 induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame.