Former Predators Captains Shea Weber, Kimmo Timonen, Mike Fisher, and Tom Fitzgerald Return to Nashville for Captains Night

David Poile called Shea Weber one of their best drafts ever. 

"We were so smart we drafted three players before Weber," Poile said laughing. 

Weber didn't know what to expect when he was drafted by Poile and the Predators. 

"I didn't know anything about Nashville at the time other than country music," Weber said. "It was all new to me."

He learned to love Nashville.

"It was such a great experience here," Weber said. "Eleven years. I pretty much grew up here. I came when I was 20, I left when I was 30, 31. So many great memories. It's wild how fast it goes." 

Kimmo Timonen's path to Nashville and the NHL came when David Poile watched the Finn play in the World Championships. Originally drafted by the L.A. Kings, Timonen was not signed because the organization didn't feel he was big enough to be an NHL player. 

"You have to be six feet tall and tough," Timonen said of the hockey player archetype back then. 

"I'm none of those things."

Poile believed as an expansion team they could give players opportunities, and Timonen got one with Nashville. 

There was a bit of culture shock for Timonen when he arrived from hockey obsessed Finland to a southern city working hard to become a hockey town. 

"When I walked down Broadway, people coming out of bars drunk wearing cowboy hats and I was like 'Wow...this is the NHL?'"

Timonen grew to love Nashville and a piece of his heart stayed invested in that southern hockey town. The start he got with the Predators led to an NHL career that totaled more than 1100 games.

Even after being traded to Philadelphia, Kimmo Timonen said he would play a game as a Flyer and then afterwards check the Nashville score. 

“That went on for years.”

The trade that brought Mike Fisher to Nashville in February 2011 came as a shock to the then-Ottawa center.

"I had just gotten married that July and my wife was still living here," Fisher explained. "It was still a shock being traded."

The Senators were in Calgary at the time and the Senators General Manager asked to see Fisher in one of the dressing rooms after practice. 

"That's usually not a good thing," Fisher said. 

"He asked me if I wanted the good news or the bad news," Fisher said. "I was like 'bad news'. 'You've been traded. The good news is you're going to Nashville.'"

Fisher admitted he was hoping to sign in Nashville when he was a free agent, but the trade made him a Predator a bit sooner.

"They had a good team. I loved coming to play here," Fisher said. "Nashville felt like home really, really quickly. I felt like I fit in. They had great leadership with Shea."

Fisher lead the team as captain to the 2016-2017 Stanley Cup Finals and he remembers the electricity in Nashville through that Cup run. 

"Obviously going to the Finals was a big memory too, what happened with the city," Fisher said. 

One thing the four captains from four different periods in the franchise's history wholeheartedly agreed on was how important David Poile was to them personally and to the growth and success of the Nashville Predators.

"Watching the team evolve since I left, it all goes back to David," Tom Fitzgerald said. "He had a plan and he executed the plan. You build a great culture to play right."

The four captains ended their time sharing what they learned in their tenure as Predators captains, and the message was the same across the board. 

"Don't change who you are. Be yourself. Don't try to be like someone else", Tom Fitzgerald said.