Here's what she said:
Umm, okay, so here are some names that I would avoid, uhh Luke Hughes being like premiere top of that list. Ummmm, I have done quite a bit of uhh, we'll call it character recon and injury recon... and I have not heard a single person with a good thing to say that isn't either related to him or has something to gain. So like, not great. I also don't think that he'll be there for the Canucks to take because New Jersey is going to get forced into taking him. Ummm, but if the Canucks pick 9, what I would say is this, there's no superstars in this draft, but there are contributing, complementary players.
She said he was "premiere, top of the list" of guys not to draft because in her "character recon" not a single objective person had anything good to say about him.
I’m judging her on two things, this comment and Elite Prospects bit when they dropped Hughes from 8th to 11th. [edit: Actually Luke was 8th, so it wasn’t that big a drop.] I don’t judge her on former job, her voice, how clickbait works etc
She may or not have useful information about Luke but this a useless, gossipy way to communicate it. I don’t who she talked or or how many people she talked to, she’s merely implying that she talked to multiple people since she did “a lot of character recon”. I don’t know who they are, not in even as general anonymous sources (you know, the way actual journalists do this sort of thing).
I take “character” with prospects very seriously. I believe that work ethic, coachability, leadership, being team-guy, etc plus not being a terrible person in a way in that will blow up a NHL career, are all important. I can’t do anything with a random number of unknown people not “having anything good to say” about Luke’s “character” though. She’s going to need to be a little more specific. That’s some gossipy bs, I’m supposed to take her word about the mysterious flaws of the kid that she learned from mysterious unknown sources. That’s not how to report on things, it useless and, yes, gross. She’s questioning this kid’s character and then encouraging people to fill in the blanks that she leaves. (And it’s only blanks, there’s zero substance.)
This was mentioned on EPrinkside (Elite Prospects) when they dropped him from 8th to 11st:
The other thing is that the next flattering account of his off-ice makeup to grace our staff's ears will be the first; a fair bit of concern around the league that way.
This does claim “concern around the league”. When this came out I spent a fair amount of time googling trying to find other references to that concern but I didn’t find any. I didn’t mention this because it has the same terrible phrasing, it’s still “we haven’t heard anything good” gossip columnist bullshit. Again, she/they may have actual solid information, I just won’t accept in non-journalistic gossip form because I can’t evaluate it.
I do think everyone is sleeping on “injury recon” part. Luke was the white-hot prospect shooting up charts before his nasty foot ligament injury. I assume when she’s saying she heard “good things” from people “who have something to gain” she’s also talking his foot surgery. Elite Prospects broke (?) the injury story and were leaning hard into it when they dropped him to 11th. It’s definitely going influence teams evaluations and it’s not mentioned enough in some rankings, though I think EP went overboard with the injury concerns when we just don’t know how Luke’s foot is doing. If anything the foot injury could help the Devils get Luke if we don’t win the lottery so in the end it could all work out.
The led with concern about the foot injury:
There's a lot of stuff working against Hughes. Let's start with an EliteProspects report that revealed the severity of his injury, a series of torn ligaments in his foot that required surgery. As Doerrie [yep, that’s her] noted in a recent piece on Rinkside, that could prove to be a pretty substantial hurdle, at the very least, in the short-term.
Here’s the rest of their Hughes comments:
Even so, Hughes is a brilliant skater, with great 1-on-1 ability, and a real attacking mentality with the puck on his stick. We've observed some fairly substantial growth on Hughes' part in the defensive side of the game, particularly in the neutral zone, where he's playing a tighter gap and closing with better timing than he was a few months prior. A lack of problem-solving ability keeps coming up as a red flag for our group though.
These more of my concerns with Luke but he is young and his season got cut short. I’m going need bit more substance on “the character recon” before I go there. I don’t have complete confidence in the information provided in what is to me, an embarrassingly shitty way. And I’m not someone lashes out at critics of the team but this isn’t this remotely professional or helpful.
Will Scouch puts together pretty thorough prospect analysis, and I think he does pretty good work with that. I have no idea whatsoever if he has any connections or if he is simply regurgitating what he heard Doerrie say. Around 41:45 of his most recent live stream on YouTube he very briefly hints at it, in a similar fashion to how vague Rachel was.
Will has also had Rachel on as a guest before so it's possible one of them got it from the other.
I’m guessing that’s where he got it from unless he says he’s got his own sources. Particularly since they dropped the revised rankings with Hughes at 11th on April 20 and that video is from April 22nd, so he would of just read it recently on EPrinkside.
The EliteProspects Rinkside pre-U18 2021 NHL Draft Ranking - EP Rinkside
