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, 21st
March 2016 / Thomas Roost ScoutInSwitzerland.docx
No comments:
Post a Comment