David Poile Quotations

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.

We know what kind of a person and competitor he is. He will do everything in his power to get back on the ice.

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.

His treatment will prohibit him from playing hockey through the remainder of the season. We are hopeful he will be discharged from Baptist Hospital in the next few days.

Life must go on. This is a tough loss for our team. He will be missed.

Our defense was OK, but OK isn't good enough for the NHL, and OK doesn't get you to the playoffs. So it's probably a classic case of possibly taking a step back to take a couple of steps forward. I think if we can just get this younger group the chance to gain some experience, in time they could actually be better than the veteran crew that we had last year. It's a risk, it's definitely a gamble, but we've cleared the deck to get these younger guys a chance.

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.

This was an equal opportunity training camp. Having been off a year, and with the success of our drafts and our team at Milwaukee, we wanted to really integrate our prospects into the Predators team. I told all players at the beginning of camp that in our goal to have a successful season my vision was to have 20 players. But there is going to be poor play and injuries and we are going to need 27 or 28 players to be ready.

Tomas is an extremely important and valuable part of our team, and his presence will be missed. Our thoughts and support are with him as he begins the recovery process, and we are confident that he will have a complete recovery. We know what kind of a person and what kind of a competitor he is; that being said, he will do everything in his power to get back on the ice, and we look forward to seeing him in training camp this fall.

We just thought it was a muscle cramp in his back. On a routine MRI, they discovered something that didn't look quite right.

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.

The beauty of hockey is that it is the ultimate team game. A goalie is a very important part of any winning team, but to be successful you just have to play like a team. Certainly the team has faith and confidence in Chris Mason . We believe he can do the job.

It was his best season. Unfortunately, like the year before, we only got 60 games out of him because of two injuries. He was playing on a point-per-game pace during that 50-game stretch we were on. What if he didn't get hurt? Well, we would like to find out this year and have him play a full season. Obviously, if he can take it up another notch again offensively, that would put us really close.

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.