Modern times in hockey-scouting

Hockey-scouting in old days was watching game after game, travelling long hours on long and winding roads, crumpled paper, writing down notes, freezing in lonesome and odd rinks, guzzling fat fast-food, drinking bad coffee and being polite by accepting small-talk with all the countless passionate hockey-experts sitting under  the roof in the cold provincial rinks. How is scouting today? Exactly the same. I watch game after game, travel long hours… and you name it… but this is just part of nowadays truth. Today’s scouting is much more to it. I don’t agree with some old-school scouting-experts who still just rely on what they see in the rink with their own eyes. I also don’t agree with some young intellectual academics if they believe that hockey-scouting can be done just by cutting and analyzing videos and stats. And I also don’t agree with some “armchair—scouts” believing in putting just some names on the table with doing some research on the internet. I’m a strong believer that today’s most efficient scouting-approach is a combination of all the mentioned methods. I compare modern scouting to a certain point with a modern and unspectacular secret-service-officer. A modern secret-service-officer is not living even 1% of the adventurous lifestyle as in the world-famous James Bond movies. A modern secret-service-officer is doing a lot of unspectacular computer work, analyzing data – most of them are more or less “number-crunchers”. I guess that a modern scout has to do the same to a certain point. Researching about helpful datas , analyzing them, analyzing reports and opinions, separating the serious from the garbage-opinions in reports and forums. In addition in today’s world it’s technically very realistic to watch nearly all hockey-games you really want to watch via Internet-Live-Stream . Is this useful? Does offer a hockey-game on TV - or even worse on a PC-screen - as much to a scout as to watch a game live in the arena? No, I don’t think so. I still think to watch a game live in an arena is the best thing you can do as a scout BUT: I very strongly believe that to watch a game on TV or via live-stream on PC is much better than nothing. Does give web-research-results about a player as much as if you watch a player with your own eyes in an arena? No, I definitely don’t think so. I clearly prefer to watch a player playing live in the arena BUT again: The result of an intelligent web-research is much better than nothing. So in modern scouting-times it’s not the question whether live-watching, video-analyzing, talking with other hockey-experts or doing some research in the web is the real promising method of scouting. It’s not either or, it’s all of this together in a sensible combination. I think we scouts have to use all these sources to sharpen our picture about a player and it’s not wise to disdain scouting methods we personally might not like so much. To put it “quick and dirty”: If I would be a GM I wouldn’t care at all about the methods this or that scout uses to bring the right names. A scout just HAS to bring the right names.

One last thing:

Before I started to be a scout I sometimes judged players just because of their stats. Soon after – means after a couple of years scouting-experience - I did feel that I’m now a BIG scout and I have my own experience and of course I do know – I have to know – much more than stats. I started to judge players mainly from subjective observations. This was wrong. Today I’m a strong believer in stats. Stats influence my opinion much more than in the past even if this hurts a bit my scouts pride. Unlucky me I live in a country, Switzerland, with a pure stats-desert. If I talk about useful stats I talk about stats one can find in brilliant sources like behindthenet.ca and Rob Vollman’s Hockey Abstract. Two practical examples how stats overruled subjective observations: Years back our scouting team did follow the progress and judge the potential of 17 year old Russian netminder Andrei Medvedev, born 83. If you watched him one easily could notice that he definitely didn’t look like a sportsman. We then did talk to a Russian coaching-staff-member and asked him about Medvedev. He answered: Listen, Medvedev is clumsy, he is fat and a little bit dumb and he is no athlete…. but…he stops the puck! Right he was, Medvedev had brilliant stats, he then did get drafted by Calgary and two years later became U20 Worldchampion. To be fair… he later never managed to become an NHL-netminder. His weight did grow year after year and not only naughty voices did tell that Medvedev might have been the first goalie eating himself out of the NHL… The second example is 2013 MTL draft-pick Sven Andrighetto. I heard again and again experts talking bad about him. This is bad and that I don’t like and he is not the biggest and has no extra-gear and his play away from the puck is nowhere, not easy character and so on… These comments were impressive for me and I would be lying if it didn’t influence my opinion but more impressive was that I did notice that Andrighetto was among the topscorers in whatever competition, in whatever league and in whatever team he played, ALWAYS among the topscorers. Should he be drafted? Opinions still vary a lot about Andrighetto. I tell clearly yes because today I’m convinced that real stats – you need to have tons of data and not just stats from one tournament or one season – are strong indicators about a players potential. Conclusion: Don’t overrate your subjective observations and don’t underrated serious stats.

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Zurich, 11^th September 2013 / Thomas Roost