Scouting - A Discussion of Mike Gillis' Ideas

Bubbles

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Look at it this way, since Gillis was fired, he hasn't landed a hockey ops job but he has interviewed for many. He was interviewed for Vegas and Seattle, and they all went a different direction.

Obviously, SOMETHING is holding up his re-entry into the hockey world. It's either his arrogance, OBC, or owners that won't want to spend the money that Gillis is proposing.
 

Ernie

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Look at it this way, since Gillis was fired, he hasn't landed a hockey ops job but he has interviewed for many. He was interviewed for Vegas and Seattle, and they all went a different direction.

Obviously, SOMETHING is holding up his re-entry into the hockey world. It's either his arrogance, OBC, or owners that won't want to spend the money that Gillis is proposing.

Probably just his body odour, dude was sweaty af.
 

vadim sharifijanov

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Gary Roberts was considered a "progressive" trainer who focused on hockey related sports training and proper nutrition (as far as I know). His man camp worked for lots of boys. That's actually one of the points I raised though. You could buy into everything Gillis has available to his team's players. You could also just attend Gary Roberts man camp. Which plan is better (if there is a better)? Cody Hodgson's opinion doesn't count. :sarcasm:

lol i’m not saying you shouldn’t send your kids to gary roberts man camp, just that you can do other stuff too.
 
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AwesomeInTheory

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Look at it this way, since Gillis was fired, he hasn't landed a hockey ops job but he has interviewed for many. He was interviewed for Vegas and Seattle, and they all went a different direction.

Obviously, SOMETHING is holding up his re-entry into the hockey world. It's either his arrogance, OBC, or owners that won't want to spend the money that Gillis is proposing.

The big thing with Gillis is that he really wants a degree of control that I think might turn off potential employers. That, coupled with the fact that he hasn't been in a hurry to get back into things (hence why we haven't seen him turn up as an AGM or other front office personnel like others such as Nonis did) is why he probably hasn't come back.

It was the reason he initially was hired in Vancouver -- he wanted the freedom to do what he wanted. I also think that was what led to him eventually getting ousted from his role as Canucks GM -- ownership started to intercede and that led to friction.
 
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hookshott

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Look at it this way, since Gillis was fired, he hasn't landed a hockey ops job but he has interviewed for many. He was interviewed for Vegas and Seattle, and they all went a different direction.

Obviously, SOMETHING is holding up his re-entry into the hockey world. It's either his arrogance, OBC, or owners that won't want to spend the money that Gillis is proposing.
Definitely Old Boys Club. You may have noticed, the NHL is not exactly on the leading edge of innovation!
 
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HedonisticAltruism

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There's no doubt that Gillis was "progressive." He admitted himself in recent interviews that he's really into the human performance area of sports science. So definitely with Gillis you felt that if there is a stone to turn over he would likely turn it over.

With that said though, there's theory and then there's practice. In theory you want to "manage" the league and negotiate the best schedule for your team. In practice there's not much a team can do. Maybe one year we were happy with the schedule? You can look at the schedule and determine whether it's better to stay the night or fly in to the next city after the game. The science may be there but I'm not sure that there's a one size fit all: some players would have more energy if they flew in at night as opposed to morning and vice versa.

In theory giving players the tools to maximize their recovery and sleep makes them perform better. In practice, assistant captain Willie Mitchell just gave a rookie all the sleep monitoring watches and went out for a beer with the boys. Many old school coaches give players the day off from practice to help manage fatigue. In theory, using biofeedback and neurofeedback instruments to help a player better manage stress and focus their attention can help a player in critical game situation. In practice, the Sedins went into the Mind Room once and heard themselves scoring goals with the fans cheering on. In theory, a player who takes great care of their body and combined with human performance science training should prolong a player's career. In practice, father time waits for no one.

Of course some tools such as analytics and video have become common place. I'm certain that using video as part of coaching an a player's training is helpful. But at the same time, we do talk about Hockey IQ as something that isn't likely to improve. So if you have a player who is susceptible to making slow and poor decisions defensively and with the puck how likely are you able to significantly improve such weakness through breaking things down using video with that player?

I was and still am a big fan of Gillis. I think that with him heading Hockey Operations there was a sense that the team was constantly looking for ways to gain and edge and I'm sure most players appreciate that even if they didn't buy into it. I am not sure how much of the human performance/sports science stuff that Gillis implemented actually produced a positive result. There's a fine line between wanting to be the best and doing everything to perhaps gain a slight edge. It would be one thing to measure say Hughes shot velocity and point out ways he can improve it and having Hughes wear measurement probes at every practice. Even if all that process does help, like those sleep monitor bracelets, it may be more of an annoyance than the potential edge it can bring. That's how I feel anyways.

Re: theory vs. practice - totally agree. That said, a lot of what was done was trying stuff that was never tried in practice. It's super easy to look at something in retrospect and criticize or praise and very difficult to predict a priori. But, I loved that GMMG's team was willing to try and invest more in the team outside the cap restrictions. At the end of the day, some of it stuck around and got around the league - AV's quote is actually relevant on this note.

On specifics... I mean, I don't know how best to quantify how good or bad a schedule is but there seems to be some decent arguments on their first chat with the league being successful enough that other teams started to bug the head office on it. And on specifically player's energy - you can measure that after too, no? Maybe you do empirically find that there are 'night owls' vs 'early bird's on your roster - but you don't know until you try and measure the data.

WM's example of the rookie thing I think is an example of two things more than a criticism of the system. One, sometimes you do get overwhelmed and just don't want to do this annoying last thing - it's like getting a kid to eat vegetables. Second, I honestly take the story more as a way to haze a rookie and play a practical joke on the analytic team. I think that actually has a bonding effect and we know Mitchell, Kelser, Burrows and Bieksa were all practical jokers. Now, if there's evidence that they stopped doing this completely, that would be a much better quote rather than a one off joke.

Re: mind room - who knows, maybe Henrik thought it was bunk but it really worked well for... I dunno, Ehrhoff. Or maybe it stunk overall - still doesn't mean it wasn't worth a try when it was proposed by experts on sports psychology that were testing new ideas. Now, if something showed explicit negative results and they kept pushing it, 100% fair criticism.

On Hockey IQ - I somewhat disagree. I do think that there are players who naturally pick up the game more easily than others, but so much of it is still training for years and years until it's muscle memory & instinct. Now, how you go about it is certainly up to debate and how far any given player can get, but I don't think it's worthwhile to just brush it off because of established norms masquerading as wisdom. That's how you get superstition, not scientific-like methods to consistently improve. Further, developing the methods allows you to train others in the future better too, who might not be as gifted with some of that intuition or hockey IQ. Watching video, it might make you realize that you need to train that muscle memory of a specific skill more, no? It doesn't guarantee success, but a famous management idiom is that you can't improve what you don't measure.


Now, I reiterate, I am not defending any particular result or experiment, merely that the team was approaching it in a very analytical and 'off the board' approach for innovation. That I strongly support.

And, I do understand your point (which is far more reasonable than the OP lol) - it's completely possible that the 'remedy' is worse than the 'disease', be it over-analysis, poor analysis, opportunity costs on investments (especially time) and additional mental fatigue. That said, aside from some snarky anecdotes, which have equally strong counter anecdotes/opinions, these actions correlated with dominating the league in 2010-2011. Dominating. And short of bad luck with Malhotra and what I still contend to this day as terrible officiating - would've been a cup. Now correlation does not mean causation but how bad could these tools really be if we ended up being that good? And with many of those tools still being used to this day, with a league that has transitioned very heavily into skill, speed and puck possession?

Lastly, this is just a tiny fraction of why a lot of us think highly of GMMG and poorly of GMJB - most of this is honestly not even the biggest contrast: the contracts. This mostly speaks to supporting a strong vision (which did help in signing many below market contracts) that many believe is superior to 'hurr durr size and leadership'. I'd happily eat my words if the latter vision produced a team that was anywhere close to GMMG's term - and also fully acknowledge that he did get great pieces left to him from Burke and Nonis.
 

vadim sharifijanov

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i guess the thing about the organizational flow chart i don't know is, does a team employ all those people anyway and is gillis just giving people AGM titles who in other organizations have a different title and/or rank?

because i feel like it isn't even necessarily more expensive, at least in terms of personnel. it's just establishing a more decentralized chain of command below the GM level and a tighter specialization of duties so instead of having four guys who all do bits of the same four things (like what does weisbrod even do?), you have one expert in each of those four things.

as for the two scouting groups thing, i'd really like to hear his explanation for that. my sense is he feels that if everyone is working for one director of amateur scouting, they all want to please one guy and you risk everyone having a bit of tunnel vision and you end up with a lot of the same kind of player, all with similar strengths and all with similar flaws.

but i'm not sure how you start to reconcile two different scouting lists for a draft, or make good use of having two possibly very different lists. at some point you're going to have to make choices. and i can't imagine how you keep the peace between those two scouting camps because inevitably there will be times when one's picks are majorly outperforming the other's and things can get ugly fast when half of your scouts start juicing their reports because they're worried about their jobs.
 

Bubbles

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i guess the thing about the organizational flow chart i don't know is, does a team employ all those people anyway and is gillis just giving people AGM titles who in other organizations have a different title and/or rank?

because i feel like it isn't even necessarily more expensive, at least in terms of personnel. it's just establishing a more decentralized chain of command below the GM level and a tighter specialization of duties so instead of having four guys who all do bits of the same four things (like what does weisbrod even do?), you have one expert in each of those four things.

as for the two scouting groups thing, i'd really like to hear his explanation for that. my sense is he feels that if everyone is working for one director of amateur scouting, they all want to please one guy and you risk everyone having a bit of tunnel vision and you end up with a lot of the same kind of player, all with similar strengths and all with similar flaws.

but i'm not sure how you start to reconcile two different scouting lists for a draft, or make good use of having two possibly very different lists. at some point you're going to have to make choices. and i can't imagine how you keep the peace between those two scouting camps because inevitably there will be times when one's picks are majorly outperforming the other's and things can get ugly fast when half of your scouts start juicing their reports because they're worried about their jobs.

gACQvIt.jpeg


More or less, in Gillis' vision, the director of amateur scouting becomes two jobs, and bumped up to assistant GM. I'm going to guess an assistant GM will be paid more than than a director. So there's an increase of money there.

Also, there's a "Communications director" job in there that only links to 3 of the assistant managers? Not sure what that job entails.
 

Frankie Blueberries

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Gillis was the best GM in Canucks history. But he had his issues. Lots of people note his draft record, but that's not what brought him down.

It was his arrogance. First thing he did as GM was insult Nonis (who had plenty of connections in the local media) and then insinuate that the team should move on from the Sedins.

He pissed off virtually every reporter in town except Gallagher (and maybe Botchford). Yeah, the media in this city is dumb and most of them have insufferable egos of their own, but managing them is a key part of the job. Instead he shut them out and at times openly insulted them.

At the end, with the team faltering and an impatient owner, the reporters he pissed off saw their opportunity to stabbed him while he was down. The fanbase here is notoriously fickle and were happy to go along.

Meanwhile, while Benning is objectively a much worse GM, he's respectful to everyone. And he gets a much longer rope because of it.

I have a lot of respect for Gillis but I would think twice about hiring him to be the face of the front office unless he shows a lot of awareness of how his past behaviour affected the team.

I agree with this post, but whatever arrogance Gillis had is negated by how Benning has dealt with interpersonal issues with people in the organization. Gilman, Malhotra, Brackett, Linden (deservedly, but Benning kind of looks like a weasel saving his job here), Tanev not getting an offer until last minute and Stecher not even getting an offer (?), etc. On top of this, Benning's ego got in the way of keeping decent players because they were Gillis acquisitions. Benning might be nice to the media, but the turnover of seemingly good and qualified staff because of ego and petty politics seems worse than the Gillis era. I take the GM who's a dick to the media, entities outside the team, over the guy who has internal team conflict all day. Gillis' arrogance probably poisoned the well with some other GMs though, that's a fair argument.

The above isn't necessarily true if Benning is just a mouthpiece for Weisbrod though, but then he'd still have 0 integrity.
 

vadim sharifijanov

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gACQvIt.jpeg


More or less, in Gillis' vision, the director of amateur scouting becomes two jobs, and bumped up to assistant GM. I'm going to guess an assistant GM will be paid more than than a director. So there's an increase of money there.

Also, there's a "Communications director" job in there that only links to 3 of the assistant managers? Not sure what that job entails.

yeah, i don't know. i guess i'm wondering if all of this is relative and whether they call you AGM or director of whathaveyou you're still getting paid the same money?

i think what he did with the two head scout AGMs is he took director of pro scouting and amateur scouting and made them both do both?

but who really knows? i'd love to watch his presentation.
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Paulinbc

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I'm sure many of you have read/heard about Mike Gillis "leaked" ideas on scouting. If not here's what presented to the Penguins:

IRpJDZY.jpg


The amateur scouting process has always been of interest to me. It seems to me that having as much information as possible is desirable. With that in mind, some teams have built a large scouting department. Theoretically, more eyes = more viewings and information right? Gillis himself greatly expanded the amateur scouting department when he was here. Then again, you have (arguably) good drafting teams like Anaheim, Nashville, Washington, San Jose, and even Tampa Bay who ran with a smaller group of amateur scouts. If more scouts was indeed better, the correlation doesn't seem to be there in terms of the drafting results.

I think there is a line between looking for players that fit say what a Canuck should look like and being stuck drafting the same type of player with every pick. Successful drafting teams often talk about the former. Then there's the whole "Best Asset Available" vs "Best Player Available" argument.

At the end of the day, a draft list needs to be created. Under Gillis' plan, there would be two independent draft lists. That obviously presents challenges as the time for putting together the draft list is limited.

And what about amateur scouts scouting professionally? There are certain teams that don't define the roles of their scouts. Amateur scouts can be influenced by their past views of a player as scouts can have a long memory. The Canucks have certainly acquired players they have liked from the draft. At the same time, the role of an amateur scout is to project prospects into NHL players and it's imperative that they know what an NHL player looks like.

Anyhow, I think it's an interesting discussion all around.
Not sure I agree with his tactics, but I suggested that strategy over 10 years ago.
Assuming this is in any form real, I've gained a bit more respect for the guy.
 

J Corso

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What I'd like to know about the two lists is how you actually work it come draft day.

So you're up picking at 10th overall, and one group list has their guys ranked 6, 9 and 10 still available, but the other group has their 4, 5, 7, and 8 still there (they saw the top 10 quite differently from the rest of the league and the other group).

Which group do you trust mid draft? So who do you pick, the 4 or the 6 if they're two different guys? What if #9 and #7 are the same guy so you have some sort of agreement, but both groups like other different players better.
 

MS

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What I'd like to know about the two lists is how you actually work it come draft day.

So you're up picking at 10th overall, and one group list has their guys ranked 6, 9 and 10 still available, but the other group has their 4, 5, 7, and 8 still there (they saw the top 10 quite differently from the rest of the league and the other group).

Which group do you trust mid draft? So who do you pick, the 4 or the 6 if they're two different guys? What if #9 and #7 are the same guy so you have some sort of agreement, but both groups like other different players better.

The two groups would have met and compiled a joint list in the weeks before the draft.
 

J Corso

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The two groups would have met and compiled a joint list in the weeks before the draft.

The graphic says they will produce two independent draft lists. Which implies they're not merging them. Otherwise he'd just say preliminary or something.

But even if they do combine, how do you combine them? Just average the positions? What if one group hates a guy and has him as a Do Not Draft while the other has him #7? Does that guy go on the final list higher than a dude rated 46 on both lists?
 

MS

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The graphic says they will produce two independent draft lists. Which implies they're not merging them. Otherwise he'd just say preliminary or something.

But even if they do combine, how do you combine them? Just average the positions? What if one group hates a guy and has him as a Do Not Draft while the other has him #7? Does that guy go on the final list higher than a dude rated 46 on both lists?

They would be independent until they weren’t, just before the draft. No team would ever hit draft day without a single list by that point - it would be a total gong show.

The second point is the same point I made - it wouldn’t work as it would just bend everything toward compromise and consensus. Might as well just use Bob McKenzie’s ratings at that point.
 
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HedonisticAltruism

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They would be independent until they weren’t, just before the draft. No team would ever hit draft day without a single list by that point - it would be a total gong show.

The second point is the same point I made - it wouldn’t work as it would just bend everything toward compromise and consensus. Might as well just use Bob McKenzie’s ratings at that point.

I think the whole point at the end of the day ends up being some kind of compromise or consensus anyway, regardless. Even if you *really* believe Gradin has picked well - you have to compromise otherwise to his vision or someone else's. In this case, at least you're not reinforcing biases throughout a scouting team - it provides a counterbalancing 'peer review' process, where you have to argue your point with strong analytical analysis. Now, there's certainly so much noise that it's questionable if you'll find someone who can actually quantify/correlate to 'eye tests', especially when there's no control of variables between leagues, but at least you're not both settling in on one idea because it was mentioned first or so.

I don't think it would be as simple as averaging the lists... at least I hope not because I agree that is 'aiming for mediocrity' in a sense. What I would suggest might be given the list at a given draft position/player availability, how confident is each team and what research were they able to produce to justify that should be the pick. Not too much different than believing one or two scouts.

None of us really know though - not enough details on the process outlined from MG.
 

Windy River

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I really like this approach...I love the idea of getting rid of the "groupthink"...It reminds me of the scene in Moneyball when all the scouts were sitting around together with the same old archaic ideas until Billy Beane shook up the room and the old style of thinking.
Lol Moneyball. Wasn’t the whole premise of the ‘innovation’ to rate guys by on-base % rather than just hitting %? Like actually consider the players ability to effectively discern a ball from a strike and make it on base bia walks too. Just seems so shockingly obvious....
 

ghostingtaro

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Gillis was and still is a smart hockey mind. For whatever reason I feel like he rubs others the wrong way. That or he is dead set on being a GM and nothing less
 

Pip

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Yeah this absolutely made no sense. They hate the guy so much that they won't trade with him but then 24 of them vote for him as GM of the year.

If you want to be petty that would seem to be the place to do it.. not when you're trying to make a trade to make your team better.

please stop making so much sense
 

StreetHawk

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The big thing with Gillis is that he really wants a degree of control that I think might turn off potential employers. That, coupled with the fact that he hasn't been in a hurry to get back into things (hence why we haven't seen him turn up as an AGM or other front office personnel like others such as Nonis did) is why he probably hasn't come back.

It was the reason he initially was hired in Vancouver -- he wanted the freedom to do what he wanted. I also think that was what led to him eventually getting ousted from his role as Canucks GM -- ownership started to intercede and that led to friction.
The question to them ask is how many other teams give their GM or President that type of control?

if the answer is less than 5 likely means he’s asking for way more than what the industry gives out.
 
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WetcoastOrca

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Gillis was good at some areas and poor at others. I thought he was a good GM for filling in the pieces on a very good team but a poor GM at rebuilding. And yes he was better than Benning but that's a pretty low bar.
 

Frankie Blueberries

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Gillis was good at some areas and poor at others. I thought he was a good GM for filling in the pieces on a very good team but a poor GM at rebuilding. And yes he was better than Benning but that's a pretty low bar.

He was never given a chance to rebuild, though. His only relatively high draft picks were Horvat and Hodgson. Horvat looks like a fantastic pick that gets better with age, and Hodgson had a freak career-ending injury but still was a decent pick given who went after him. The only other potential example to go off is that he was rumoured to want Larkin at 6th overall in 2014. I guess the Luongo for Markstrom + Matthias trade was also a rebuilding move which was a slam dunk.

Saying Gillis was a poor GM at rebuilding when he was denied a rebuild is ridiculous.
 

Canucker

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Part of the reason Benning was hired was because he somehow convinced Trevor and the Aqualini's that he could basically retool on the fly and not have to rebuild.
 

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