What does a Icehockey Scout do in Switzerland?

I very often notice that people think completely wrong about what a hockey-scout is doing in Switzerland and not seldom even sports-journalists don’t know or don’t do research enough about what is a scout’s life and in my personal case what is a scout’s life in Switzerland.

The biggest misunderstanding is that a lot of people mix a scout’s job up with the one of an agent. A scout – who takes his job really serious - can’t be an agent and vice-versa because an agent is first and foremost a salesman of his clients and a scout must be a completely independent and very critical voice in terms of player-evaluations. So many people think that me as a scout I have clients (players) and they pay me money or the they believe that I discover a hockey-talent that nobody else knows about, then bring this player to a team and get money for this. Completely wrong. In these modern times there are no hockey-talents undiscovered anymore and nobody else knows about; these times are long gone but of course there are tons of different opinions about players.

Once again: A hockey-scout is an independent critical voice in the full process of player-evaluations. In my personal case I’m proud to work for 20 years now for the NHL, write reports about players, discuss players with my scouting-colleagues and do international criss-cross-rankings of so called “NHL-draftees”, players who might get drafted in the upcoming NHL-draft. In addition I have a small consulting-job since 9 years with the target to help a Swiss National-League team (3 years SCB and now since 6 years EHC Biel) to find promising B-League-players and/or junior-players with pro-potential. Both jobs are small jobs, means part-time-jobs. My fulltime-job is the one as a Head Human Resources in an international tourist-company with more than 1’500 employees worldwide. Another not seldom misunderstanding is that not me as the scout takes decisions for the club. As a consultant I present recommendations about not very well known players, young players and import-players. Of course the club never asks me about already established players from our league because they know these players well enough  - some sporting-directors even played with or against these players – so they don’t need my opinion about such players. In the very end there are players playing in a scout’s team the scout did recommend, players a scout never got asked about and even players a scout explicitly didn’t recommend to hire. It’s wrong to believe that players in a team got hired from a scout.

To summarize:  A scout is not an agent, doesn’t get money from players and also not from clubs for specific player-recommendations and a scout doesn’t take decisions in a club about player-recruiting. A scout is a critical, independent voice in terms of player-evaluations and usually gets a yearly small consulting-contract with the target to support the sporting-director in his decision-taking.

Personally I look at it as a small company, means I can’t do everything by myself because there are tons of interesting hockey-games worldwide and of course I can’t cover all of them. I couldn’t do so even if I would be a fulltime-scout, personally I follow approx. 100 games per season live in arenas plus tons of games at home on computer. So, one of my most important parts is to evaluate and “hire” two highly qualified so called birddogs in each of the relevant hockey-countries. People who deliver me professional, critical und detailed infos about players in their countries, I – resp. my team, the team who asks me – could be interested in. Even after 20 years I’m still fine-tuning this group of birddogs, I’m sure that my educations in human-resources subjects are a big advantage to this. It’s naive to believe that a single scout can evaluate worldwide all relevant players. A good scout needs excellent “birddogs”, needs excellent information, high-end stats and a certain level of technology to come to a fair amount of relevant information about players. He definitely needs an experienced eye and needs to go to games in the arenas, especially to games what won’t be broadcasted on TV and/or via live-stream. Then you put all the single information-puzzle-pieces together to a hopefully clear picture. In the very end it’s always up to the scout to give an opinion. Do I recommend to hire this player for this or that price, are there cheaper, similar quality alternatives, are there similar players on the market? To all these questions the scout gives his personal answer but this answer should be based on a variety of information, of course including personal player-viewings. In terms of our Swiss player market I also started to run an Excel-sheet with informations about approx. 600 players in our different SUI leagues and with a dynamic evaluation process. This database is going to be updated every 6 months.

What technology do I use? I go to games with my I-Pad-Mini in terms of line-ups and looking up some stats if needed. I have my prepared paper-document in front of me with up to 5 players I follow and report about in a single game, write my notes down in handwriting and transform my handwritten notes at home into a computer-system. Some scouts chose the direct input to computers and work with laptops during games. I might also go this direction in the very near future probably. I’m a bit conservative with the use of latest technologies but in the very end I definitely will use it also. In addition I know dozens of helpful webpages with information about players, buy worldwide all relevant hockey-magazine, keep them and read all kind of books with the subject of talent development, talent evaluation and hockey-related content.

You see, I’m a real “puckhead” and now we come to the perfect profile of a hockey-scout. Is it an advantage if you were a player in the past? Yes, it is definitely an advantage compared to somebody who never did do a team-sport. Is it important that you were a pro-hockey-player in the past? No, not really. Don’t overrate the level you played, this is not very important. But of course I did and do talk here and there with former NHL-players who are scouts now and in some details they did teach me interesting things what maybe former minor-leaguers don’t know. But: As it is in all jobs: The most important success-factor is the passion. You have to love your job, you have to love being a scout. If you are top motivated in what you do, if you work hard and if you love to work hard: THIS is the real success-factor. Rest assured that my “birddogs” (former players, passionate puck-heads, men and women) come from completely different backgrounds with different strengths and weaknesses. If you have different backgrounds in your team and you have the ability to take the best out of everybody… then you are an excellent scout. I’m not right there yet, I still have to learn a lot but I’m a keen learner and I guess I improve year by year…and I will never stop to learn until my very last day! 

To be a hockey-scout is the best part-time-job you can imagine! My worldwide network with awesome people is priceless and I love to travel to places I never would go as an ordinary tourist. Huge parts of my rich life-experience is because of being a hockey-scout for the NHL and some teams.  I’m very thankful and proud to be a small part of the great community in the game of hockey and hope that I can go on forever!

Horgen, 21^st March 2016 / Thomas Roost                                                                                  ScoutInSwitzerland.docx

Hockey Playoff Psycho Madness

You know the playoffs are here when everybody tells you that this is by far the most beautiful time of the year (although, let's be honest, this is actually just true for the underdogs…).

Playoffs are when top-scorer X is not scoring and “non-valeur” Y becomes the hero with a goal in the overtime and everybody has explanations for everything but nobody really knows…

Playoffs are here when too many choleric slightly red faces in the crowd become dark-red and the crowd switches from euphoria to depression and aggression within just a couple of minutes. Playoffs are when journalists from even quality-media lose temper and pray bar-room-slogans.

Playoffs are when you want others to believe that you know and you know nothing. Playoffs are when you can witness excellent textbook-psychology-examples of the good and the bad and when yesterday’s ‘good’ is tomorrow’s ‘bad’.

Playoffs are when experts explain that the losing team didn’t have enough leaders, didn’t want to win badly enough, lacked fire in the eyes and didn’t do the small things good enough and complain about other trivial observations. And playoff is when the disappointed hockey-mob takes over with martial rhetoric and some media start to jump onto this bandwagon…

Especially the series between the ZSC Lions and SC Bern shows me a lot of very interesting aspects about the psychological characteristic of playoff hockey and not only in terms of players and coaches but also experts, spectators, and media.

You’ll find my observations later in this column because first of all, I want to explain how “fair” hockey playoffs are. Thanks to some clever brains at the Harvard Sports Analytics Collective and at Hockeyanalytics, we not only believe but we really know that:

1. Hockey playoffs are heavily influenced by randomness.

2. Goals for and against are the only winning/losing factors.

3. Hockey is played by human beings at high speed in tight, size-limited rinks on a very slippery and sometimes imperfect surface with a small rubber. All this is a perfect recipe for a chaotic event and if you don’t believe in this, then you never watched a hockey game.

4. There is a great deal of statistical proof that goals happen randomly.

5. The only unambiguous event in a hockey game is a goal, all other events are just a matter of opinion.

Most people, especially fans but also experts and journalists, struggle to accept all of this. We love good stories and want to believe in cause and effect. Yet, there are too many chaotic factors and there is randomness everywhere in the game of hockey.

So, coming back to my psychological observations in just 5 (five!) playoff-days (3 games). First of all, let’s have a look at the teams: After a very successful regular-season with just the disappointment in the Champions Hockey League (which has at least partly to do with the level of our league and not only with the level of the ZSC-Lions), the Lions began their first game as one could have expected. Their plays were full of dynamic, full of confidence and these first 10 minutes in game one were a complete mirror of the regular-season: Skillful, fast and confident ZSC Lions and an SC Bern with limited mobility, average skills, and shaky confidence.

As we all do know, the game changed. Bern did score out of the blue but Zurich still played pretty well, still a bit better than Bern but in the end, they lost on penalty shots. Similar sights in game two: The ZSC Lions controlled most parts of the game but didn’t score enough goals to eliminate the ever burning and slowly growing Bernes flame.

To be fair: SC Bern’s defense was very clever and disciplined in all three games so far. They tried to close the slot area and did pretty well. In the end, another win for Bern in another game where Zurich was slightly better.

Game 3: A completely different psychology: Shaky Lions with trembling hands on one side and on the other side, Bern, who had to cope without three of their most skillful players (Blum, Plüss, and Roy). The intensity was good in this game but the skill-level made me really worrying about our level of hockey.

Besides Nilsson and Matthews, the aspects of puck management, hand skills, passing quality, and shooting technique were really bad in this game. In a game with quite a lot of possible players for the Swiss national team…

For some reason, the Lions had a 2-0 lead and many (including me) thought that this can be the turning point in this series. Not so fast… Bern did come back with two goals and what happened afterwards is, once again, a textbook psychological observation about losing confidence, about losing control, about losing composure and becoming hectic.

The other way around, in terms of the SC Bern: From this point onwards Bern was clearly the better team and they well deserved the win in the very end. Within just three games in just 5 days, a stable winning team did transform into a messy group of players with no confidence at all and the year-long losers from Bern all of a sudden started to play calm with solid passing and smart, composed decisions.

In the very end, I even found some small arrogant plays simply to show the Lions how ridiculous they are. Unbelievably interesting to follow all this. This is the playoff! This is playoff excitement and also a bit of playoff unfairness.

Let’s turn the page and observe what happened in the stands, in the crowd: A happy Zurich-crowd in the beginning, full of optimism and applauding also the smallest easy plays at the beginning of game one. A shaky mood during the rest of game one with alternating angry outbursts and supporting chants and sometimes big silent question-marks.

After losing the first two games, it took only 35 seconds into game three until the first unhappy sound roared through the Hallenstadion after a sort of sloppy pass was played. A Very shaky atmosphere for the rest of the game. The crowd support always seemed to be on very thin ice and more and more red and aggressive heads started to illuminate the Hallenstadion and choleric outbursts added even more spice to the already exciting game.

Even more interesting are the reactions and comments from experts and journalists – This is again textbook-psychology at it’s best: Most of the media praised the Lions throughout the year as the 'Swiss poster boy' of our league. They applauded the speed and the skill of this team and the smartness of coach Crawford who did do so many things so much better than Guy Boucher in Bern.

However, the majority of the media changed their opinion extremely fast and criticized Crawford for giving Matthews/Nilsson too much ice-time and not enough to other players.

Well, if you look at it rationally, it’s the "chicken and egg"- problem: What was first? Did the coach give additional ice time to Matthews/Nilsson because they played indeed better than the others or did the others play bad because they didn’t get enough ice-time?

I tell this even to the angriest and most self-confident critic: You don’t know! It’s just a guessing game. My personal observation was that in game one Nilsson/Matthews were by far the most dangerous forwards and nearly nothing did come from any of the big-name Swiss forwards.

Every coach on this planet would have reacted with additional ice-time to the hot players and this is exactly what he did. So I only agree with these critics to a certain point because it was a common, pragmatic decision of a coach. But of course, I also don’t know, it’s just my opinion.

Did Crawford mix the lines in the wrong way, did he play with the wrong import-players? Well, maybe… we just don’t know, all these theories are just guessing games. As of today, I even listen to voices who want to fire Crawford immediately.

To fire the coach who led the team to a championship, to a runner-up medal and to two regular-season-titles and a Cup win, a coach who five days ago nobody really questioned. It’s unbelievable how not only a player, a team or coaches but also experts and journalists lose composure, calmness and get overwhelmed by emotions and irrational reflexes. Once again, textbook psychology at it’s best.

Everybody always says: “I’m so excited for the playoffs.” Well, as manager, president or head coach of a “clear favorite”, I would not be very excited. Instead, I would have a lot of respect and even a little bit of anxiety, just because I know that even a clear favorite can easily fail in the playoffs.

What about the coaches? Crawford is already well-known from his time as an NHL-bench-boss for losing his composure in critical situations. He obviously hasn’t learned too much in this respect since then and he might even think that the refs show more respect towards him compared to more low-key head coaches.

However, the refs don’t care and right they are. So Crawford’s behavior during games and in some interviews are haunting him after all is said and done, it’s simply counterproductive( the same goes for McSorley by the way).

On the other hand, you have the unheralded Lars Leuenberger and after a sort of sloppy start with the one or the other unlucky interview, I start to notice a certain ability to learn. He is improving and from what I can observe from the outside, I quite like how he behaves, treats players during the games and answers questions after the battles.

He is low key, composed and quite rational. I guess there is some potential in Lars Leuenberger. But once again… my coach-critics might be different if the puck had gone the other way if the Lions had benefitted a bit more from lucky bounces. It’s easier to act calm and relaxed if you are winning. So…

Towards the end of my “praying” ;-), I just want to remind every reader that the ZSC Lions played very well for almost a full season with just one bad week and the SC Bern played a bad season with just one good week. This is the fundament for a professional analysis: to think about what worked out and what did not. I recommend to the Lions and the Bern-management not to step into the trap and to believe that for the winner, everything was good and for a loser, everything was bad.

Neither Crawford nor Leuenberger as coaches are heroes or scapegoats even if one won nearly all regular season games and lost in the first playoff week and the other had mediocre results for long stretches of the season and a sensational first playoff week.

We have to calm down and think cold-blooded and rational and in the very end,  we might come to the conclusion that the wisest judges are the softest ones and we all take our wisdom and theory as what they are: Unproven guessing games with a lot of examples to support our theories but with just as many counterexamples.

The playoffs are unpredictable, unexplainable and unbelievably exciting… but sometimes also really unfair. We have to accept all of this before we call for heads to roll and before we call the winners “messiah.” It’s as simple as that.

Coming back to the teams, the players. What should they do to prepare playoff games, to prepare crucial championships- or relegation-games? The somewhat disappointing answer is that you can’t do much, just quite a small part lies in your hands.

But I will start this discussion with a question: What is the difference between game 7 in the regular-season and game 7 in a playoff series? Is the rink smaller, the net bigger and you play not 5 on 5 but 6 on 6? Of course not… it’s just the result in the end what makes a difference.

The loser goes home and the winner gets to practice tomorrow. Intensity arises from unscripted competition. The suddenness of events in playoff games often exposes mental and physical weaknesses. It matters how players and coaches react during critical moments in the heat of a crucial competition.

The team and the players practice their sport for moments like this but in practice we cannot truly replicate pressure situations and that’s why we have to train for pressure situations in other ways. This brings us back to our game 7 in the regular season. How one prepared and performs in this game is more or less indicative of how they will perform in playoff competition, in championship or relegation games.

When athletes think too much, they are not really thinking too much because they are usually thinking about the wrong things at the wrong time. Wrong things are e.g. the hope for positive plays and the fear of what will happen when mistakes are made.

Athletes have to stay strategic and focus on what they can immediately control, e.g. execution of routine plays and the responsibilities of the given roles each player has within the team. Athletes have to think about the most basic, fundamental elements that are required of them to perform correctly.

Focusing on your responsibilities instead of focusing on wanting to make the big play or not wanting to make a mistake. Athletes who learn to treat game 7 of the regular season the same way as the championship game are successful in focusing on the aspects they can control The more consistent this preparation is throughout a season, the less likely athletes and teams will become victims of playoff pressure.

And you know what? I’m close to 100% sure that all players – in our example all players from the winning SC Bern and the losing ZSC Lions – were taught this and know about all this and accordingly, they prepare more or less their games in this way. But in the very end, we still have losers and winners and the most honest explanation about winning or losing would be: I don’t know, I’m just happy that we did win or the other way round.

It’s playoff time, enjoy and accept the unpredictable and the unexplainable! 

Horgen, 10^th March 2016 / Thomas Roost