A Scouts Life

In many ways, it's a job much like that of Santa Claus. You get one day a year in the spotlight and you spend it finding and opening presents you hope your team will enjoy for years to come.

The job is that of Director of Amateur Scouting, arguably the most important one at this time of year. The Stanley Cup has been awarded to the Carolina Hurricanes, but the ground work for the team which wins it several years from now likely will have its roots in this draft.

What goes through the mind of scouts heading into the draft and while sitting at their teams table, ready to announce the names of players they hope will carry their team into the upper echelon of the NHL? I had an opportunity to sit down and discuss this and other parts of a scouts' life with a current NHL scout who has in the past served as an Assistant Director and eventually the Director of Amateur Scouting, posts he held for a combined total of eight years. For personal reasons, he declined to have his name printed, so from here on will be referred to as 'the scout.'

In the average year, scouts will log numerous trips, watching players throughout the territory they represent. The miles, and the costs that go with them to the scouts team, tend to be restricted as much as possible, both to reduce costs and to limit road time for the scout, many of whom have a family they are spending vast amounts of time away from. Thus, most scouts are based out of the main areas in their regions, an area where several teams are located in a central area. This may be good for the scout, who may need to only travel a few hours each day to get from one game to the next, but for some teams on the outer reach of the league, this can prove a problem.

"Very few scouts will go to Brandon, the eastern most team in the WHL. They will wait till they come into Regina or Saskatoon or something like that. Whenever you're on the edge of a league or the most remote parts of it, it's still a disadvantage. To scouts, it's time and money and they don't want to spend the time and money to come to these places," the scout stated.

This can prove especially painful for a prospect that may be injured for some or all of the games his team plays in those central regions. While an elite prospect such as Phil Kessel or Jordan Staal would have scouts hoping on the next flight to see them in this sort of situation, a lower tier prospect could find himself not being exposed to some or all teams, causing him to plummet on draft day.

Plummeting on draft day is the same fate many lower tier players face. While some Junior A leagues, such as the British Columbia Hockey League (BCHL), have made inroads to the point they are regularly producing first round players, most Junior A franchises aren't as fortunate. An example of this can be seen in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League (MJHL), arguably the worst in the country from producing NHL draft picks or future NHLers. It's proving unattractive to players who have future ambitions after junior to come to some of the lesser leagues in favor of trying their luck at a more advanced league, such as the BCHL or the Alberta Junior Hockey League.

"In the last 20 years the MJHL hasn't produced as many players. At the Manitoba Junior League level, in Canada and Western Canada, the BC Junior League has been the most aggressive league in terms of recruiting. If you look around the BC Junior League there's a lot of Manitoba kids playing, because they get recruited quite heavily by the U.S. colleges, particularly to the Western Collegiate group," the scout assessed of the situation. "What I think Kim (Davis, MJHL Commissioner) is trying to do is get these kids to stay in the Manitoba Junior League, and if he can, people like me will come back. Travis Zajac was drafted in the first round two years out of Salmon Arm, he's a Winnipeg kid. As a Manitoba player, it'd be nice if they could say he was drafted out of Manitoba… It's got to start with one kid getting drafted. It's going to start with someone the BC Junior League misses and is good."

Once you've narrowed it down on which leagues, teams and players you want to watch, what is it you are looking for? Well, the answer to that is pretty basic really; talent.

"First you have to assess his talent, can he do it… then you go and meet him and find out where's he comes from; try and get a handle on what you think of him," the scout stated.

While most draft junkies know the basics of what to look for in a skater, the man between the pipes is often harder to grasp. A number of top tier goaltending prospects lop year after year while several lower end draft picks slowly emerge as the future elite of the NHL, with names like Ryan Miller (5th round, 138th overall in 1999), Miikka Kiprusoff (5th round, 116th overall in 1995) and Cristobal Huet (7th round, 214th overall in 2001) popping up among the elite goaltenders this year. So what's in a goalie that makes him stand above the rest?

"Goalies are like players, goalies have to have hockey sense. They got to be able to anticipate where the play is going to be. And one of the things that I've learned from some of the goalie coaches is that there's a lot of different ways to stop a puck, but there's only one exact right way," the scout assessed. "The guys that do it that way tend to not give up rebounds and they tend to make it look easy. So you look for those guys who see to be in position anticipating the play. Kari Lehtonen was one of them like that, always in the right spot at the right time. You look for athletic ability and the ability to move quick post to post. The puck moves pretty quick and there's guy that can go from deep in their crease to out here to out there, that's something that you can't teach, they've got some fast twitch (muscles). I look for players that compete. Maybe they give up a bad goal but they bounce back, they still give their teams a chance to win. That's one of the keys things, that a goalie gives his team a chance to win."

One area in the draft which is always up for debate is should a goalie be drafted in the first round. Some have turned out to be smart picks, such as Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Martin Brodeur, while others, like Maxime Ouellet, Patrick Desrochers and Mathieu Chouinard, have been complete flops. This scout himself presided over the selection of a goaltender in the first round and states now it's not something he'd recommend easily in the future.

"I think it's risky, I really do. Because one, their's only 30 number one jobs. I don't think you draft a goalie to be a number two; you get those guys when they're older. And the best goalie from each draft, if you look back at it historically, it's usually a pretty good goalie, but it's not always the first goalie picked. And my experience since (I've been) drafting, and I've been involved in drafting some really good goalies, and they've been late, and I've picked some goalies early and they've been bad," the scout reflected.

The other notable debate is when to go for the home run pick. Every year, a prospect or two emerges from the pack as a very high risk, high reward player; the type of play who could become one of the best players in his draft class or never see the lights of an NHL rink. The most recent high profile example was Blake Wheeler, the Phoenix Coyotes' top pick in the 2004 draft, fifth overall. This scout gives it two thumbs up.

"The same people who thought Phoenix was crazy are singing a different tune right now… He's six-foot-four and a half, 220 pound finesse guy; he's a great player. The problem that you had with the Blake Wheeler choice was that he was playing high school and most people didn't have the courage to stick their neck out for that," the scout noted.

The question everyone was asking following the pick though wasn't whether Wheeler was draft worthy, but rather why didn't the Coyotes just trade down and still grab him at a later pick. The scout pointed out it's not always that simple.

"Here's what happens if you trade down. On that pick, there's thirty teams in the league. When Blake (Wheeler) was picked, nine teams said "I can see that", ten teams said, "Are you crazy," and ten other teams said, "Oh oh, I think we might have missed something here." So if you look back at this last draft, you know how many kids were drafted out of high school in Minnesota in the first round? Three. There was three," the scout pointed out. "Thing with drafting is you rarely care about where a kid is from, but where he can get to…If you look back at so called consensus top five picks, there's a lot of busts there, guys that were just average players. Phoenix has one now, Boyd Devereaux who was a kid you had to have; sixth pick of the draft. You look at his career stats, I don't know if he's got 20 goals in his NHL career (Devereaux finished the 2005-2006 NHL season with 46 career goals in 509 career NHL games). Keith Tkachuk was a late pick. Buffalo traded with Winnipeg that year and Buffalo took Brad May, they wanted Brad May. Who would you rather have had, Brad May or Keith Tkachuk? The problem with moving back to get Blake (Wheeler), teams that draft based on what they believe in would move up to get him. So say you move to (pick) 11. Someone moves in front of you and now Wheeler's gone, and maybe the next three guys are gone on your list as well. And, if you thought he could play at 11, why not pick him at five if you think he's going to play? If you think he's going to be the player you think he is, then take him; why take the chance?"

And what roll do the pre-draft interviews play in all this, the same interviews most of the top prospects sweated their way through recently?

"Well they don't change a player's talent, but what you're looking for is confirmation of what you believe in. Every player you draft is going to have warts; things that they've got to get better at. So all you're trying to do is assess what you're going to have to work with with this player; where the potential trouble spots could be. It's a people business right. You want to try and get people that first of all have a certain level of talent. Whether you like the kid or not, you're on the powerplay you want someone who could put the puck in the net; (talent), that's most important. Then, you get to a situation where it's pretty close, who's going to fit into your team dynamic better, who's going to help other people get better, what's the make up of your team going to looking like in six, seven years from now, what do you see your team doing," the scout explained. "What you want to try to assess is the probability that a players going to reach his potential. You assess talent, that's the potential right. Then you assess the probability a players going to reach his potential. The guy up here (on your list) might have weak character so that brings him back (down to) here; the guy down here (on your list) may have real strong character. I'll give you two guys; Jeff Carter, Mike Richards. Richards may not have as much skill, but he's got desire and all that off the charts."

The Director of Amateur Scouting title always sounds impressive on draft day, but the scout explains their's not much to it that a scout doesn't do. The only difference is the number of hours and some tedious administration. Yet any key player a team is thinking of drafting, the Director needs to find a way to get his eyes on him.

"The only difference for me is I don't have the administrative duties. I still see the same amount of games, I still see the same players. It's no real change for me. It's allowed me to work out of my home more in October and concentrate on only Western Canada and Western U.S….This has been refreshing," the scout stated.

Yet for some players, this viewing opportunity is limited. In fact, in some cases Directors of Amateur Scouting have no other means of seeing a player than to get their hands on a video.

"Well for goalies it's a lot more effective because it's a fairly static position," the scout said of watching a video of a player. "But for players, if you've never seen him play, the video may help you ask better questions of the scouts that have seen him. The video gives you a better idea of a players stride, his body posture, whether he's improving or not. And if you've got a video where the guys around the puck all the time, he must be a good player, if you watch the video and you never see the puck you wonder what the hell he's doing."

All this goes into the formation of a list. While some teams may do their list differently, this scout feels any stories of teams having a list comprised of only 150 names or running out of names on their list is either false or those teams have some problems with philosophy.

"The list never dries up," the scout said. "If your scouts have done a good job, there's always someone your scouts are excited about. I've never been to a draft where you run out of players."

Naturally, a scout would love to put all this hard work to good use at the draft, so it can be frustration when the team has a tendency to trade away picks year after year, a habit the St. Louis Blues used to practice in recent years. The draft is as much about luck as it about hard work, especially in the later rounds, and the more picks you have, the better your odds are of coming away with something serviceable.

"It's like baseball; you get two at bats and you miss twice your batting percentage is zero but if you have four at bats and you hit twice you're batting .500, you know what I mean. You get more swings at the plate; you have a better chance at success. If you don't have a pick, you can't get very close. It doesn't matter how good your scouting is if you don't even get a shot right? You watch a lot of good players go by your table on draft day and you say "I liked him, he was pretty good"," the scout summarized.

And how those picks are used in Europe may be different in the future the scout figured, with the ramifications of the new collective bargain agreement trickling down and possibly altering teams' plans.

"The rules have changed in Europe now, now we have to sign the players within two years, they're on the same timeline that a junior player was. So I think you're going to see probably less players from Europe drafted in the late rounds compared to other years and you might see older players end up drafted, we can draft them up to a certain age, then they become free. I think as players develop, you'll draft them closer to the time you think they'll come in to play," the scout stated, adding while he feels the new transfer agreement will aid in the drafting of players from Russia, he figures the biggest obstacle for that market is the amount of money they can afford to pay their players.

"I think that's going to be a viable option (for players)," said the scout.

Like all jobs, there comes a time for evaluation. How does a scouting department assess a draft and when is up to each team, but the tendency seems to be five years after a draft is a good time to reflect on past glories, and failures.

"You can tell with some players immediately within the next two months whether it was a good pick or not. A lot goes into the development of a player; injuries are a big factor, what your team does with them is another big factor. They are all equally important I think. You try and draft players you're not going to apologize for. They all can't play, they can't, it's impossible. You draft players that end up being good players at whatever level they achieve…You want guys that are going to get better, continue to develop. You want guys that when you go to the rink you say, "Yeah, there's a good player."," the scout said.

So, if you had all seven of your picks heading into Saturday's draft, what five years down the road would be a good draft in your eyes?

"If you get two players, that's good; if you get three players that's outstanding. Think about, there's only 30 teams, there's 600 players in the league and you draft 250 each year, so if each team had two new players each year, that's only 60 new players coming into the league each year, that's not much turnover," the scout figured.

One question which emerged from the lockout for all the draft followers was where would some of the high spending teams spend the extra funds they are no longer allowed to spend on player salary. One idea was teams would stockpile an impressive scouting department to try and get an edge at the draft table. This scout figures things will continue much the same as they have in the past.

"I think the good teams have always spent money on scouting, the teams that have drafted well over the years and hung onto their picks like the Ottawa Senators, the New Jersey Devils," explained the scout. "I don't think things will change in that regard, I think that these teams have always done that and if you look at the history of the championship teams in the National Hockey League over the past 12, 15 years, they were bottom feeding teams that picked early in drafts year after year…So if you look at it, their best players still came from the draft, and that will never change. I think its different now in the sense that you need to add at the bottom end of your lineup in terms of salary that can play at the top end of your line up."

This scout would also like to see the draft take on more importance in the publicity side of things for hockey, as there appears to be plenty of untapped potential from what is a unique sporting venture.

"I don't know if the league's office really understands the draft. We're run out of New York and the NHL draft is so much different than any other sport. (The) NFL, you're drafting from college leagues everyone watches on Saturday's; the NBA is a little bit more global in terms of the European talent, certainly baseball is, but I'd say we are closer to baseball than any other sport. The NHL has to do a better job of selling the product."

One of the most obvious differences the NHL draft has from other leagues is the draft tables. While most other main sports see the teams set up 'war rooms' in their respective cities, the NHL teams all gather in an open room and sit in a large group of tables' just feet from each other. This scout doesn't want to see that end despite the danger of a planned pick being leaked to nearby teams.

"I think it's good because there's a lot of deal making done on that day. I think it's a very rare day when you get all of the decision makers in one room, I don't know that you have that in any other sport, and I think that's good. I think that can actually be a positive thing. Something that I always talked to the scouts about before we went to the draft table is keep your lists covered, talk with your (mouth) covered, there's people other tables walking around trying to snipe information. If you're a good staff, you know who your competitor is for certain players. I like it, I like the way it is, I hope they don't lose it. It's exciting for the first picks, it's a nice reward for the scouts because it's an anonymous job, it gets everybody together, it creates a real sense of camaraderie and it gives you more of a sense of belonging to the team. But there can be pitfalls with it in terms of disclosing information. It's competitive; it's very, very competitive. Even if you don't get a kid on draft day you never let somebody know you liked him because you might want to trade for him," the scout said of sitting in the hot zone.

The draft is sure to be filled with plenty of twists and turns, just like it is every year. Naturally, some picks will seem like no-brainers while others will leave even the most ardent draft follower scratching his or her head in bewilderment. But, looking at some of the draft day activities and all the long hours leading up to it through a scouts eyes can perhaps lend insight into why these picks are made.