Earlier this week, the Nashville Predators announced the retirement of their long-time General Manager, David Poile. They have stated that former head coach of the Nashville Predators Barry Trotz will be assuming the role on July 1, 2023. Poile has been a GM for 41 years and leads the league in team wins at 1,520 and games “played” at 3,050. Starting with the Atlanta Flames, now the Calgary Flames, Poile was also the GM of the Washington Capitals before coming to Nashville as the first-ever General Manager in 1997.
What are General Managers (GM)?
Now you’re probably asking, “What is a General Manager?”
Basically, a general manager is the one who is in charge of all things player contracts. They are the ones who build up the team through drafts, trades, and the signing of players. For a team, there is one general manager, and typically two assistants then maybe a couple of advisors. General Managers are over a number of people, but the main people are the scouts.
Scouts
Who wouldn’t want to get paid to travel and watch hockey for a living? That is a lot of what scouts do. Their job is to evaluate the players and assess their skills. When it comes to NHL scouting, it’s about looking at other NHL teams’ talent as well as junior and collegiate teams in North America and Europe. Each NHL team has two different types of scouts, Professional and Amateur. There are about 5 Pro scouts who focus on professional teams whether in the NHL or in different leagues. For Amateur scouts, there are far more, given that there for more amateur teams, collegiate, juniors, and high school.
Working with the Preds last season in game-night communications, I got to know a few of the scouts for other NHL teams, and getting to hear all about their stories, careers, and current jobs was really insightful in the behind-the-scenes aspects of trades and draft picks that the average fan doesn’t typically get to see.
The role they play
General Managers and their support staff play a large role in a team’s success. Along with all the things they do with player contracts through signing, trading, and drafting, they also help decide who gets called up and sent down from the affiliate teams.
Affiliate teams, or “farm teams” are the team that has and is developing minor league players under contract for the NHL team.
Being called up, or recalled is bringing a guy from the farm team up to the pro team.
Being sent down, or reassigned means sending a player from the pros back down to their farm team.
Players are called up typically when there is some form of injury but they can also be called with teams wanting to test minor league players or push current players. This also happens around the trade deadline as well which this year is March 3rd, which I will talk about in more detail in a later post. For instance, the Nashville Predators have traded away 3 players (as of writing this) but haven’t signed many players, or the deals happened right before a game so the new players couldn’t get here fast enough. For this case, they had a couple of players recalled from Milwaukee so they would have enough players for the game.
These trades and signings play a large role in a team making it to the playoffs. Trading a player mid-way through can change everything. It changes the lines, and chemistry, the coaching staff isn’t the most familiar with them so there’s a learning curve that comes with that. Teams a lot of times are also in a “rebuilding” phase meaning a team will trade or not sign some older guys on the team and exchange them for draft picks and prospects that aren’t yet at the NHL level.
If you have any further questions, be sure to submit a Fan Question form! And don’t forget to subscribe to my email!
