NASHVILLE — On the day he accepted the job as general manager of the Nashville Predators, David Poile called his dad.
He was considering two significant offers earlier in the day. One with the Predators, an expansion team in a non-traditional hockey market. The other with the Toronto Maple Leafs, in the loudest, most vibrant, noisiest market in the National Hockey League.
Poile had interviewed with Ken Dryden for 12 hours — that’s about three Dryden sentences — and gone to dinner with Larry Tanenbaum and his family in Toronto. “In my mind, I thought I was there,” Poile said.