You’ve been hired as the Canucks’ new GM; what do you do?

[Bubbles]

We need fewer scouts, not more. There are no secrets and having too many chefs in the kitchen dilutes the work of your best guys who actually know what they're doing.

Personally I'd have a huge video staff compressing a shit ton of games for our best guys to watch.

So more video personnel, but less on the ground scouts? Interesting. What about games that might not have tv broadcasts?

 

[MS]

So more video personnel, but less on the ground scouts? Interesting. What about games that might not have tv broadcasts?

Pretty much everything is on TV now. Obviously you'd probably need a couple extra scouts on the ground watching the Slovakian Jr. league or whatever, but those would be exceptions. The whole NHL scouting system is still based in 1975 when the only way to watch a prospect was to send some old retired player to sit in a cold rink somewhere to see him.

If you have a team of, like, 30 scouts you're going to have 30 different opinions (many of them bad) about who to rank in a certain spot. And the one or two guys who are on the ball and killing it are going to get drowned in a sea of noise.

Baseball is a very different sport because you have so many HS kids spread all across America. You're weeding through tens of thousands of players to find a gem, and you need a lot of guys on the ground for that. In hockey, basically everyone is in the CHL/USHL/NCAA/Euro Jrs. And there are only a couple hundred guys in a given age year eligible in a given year. There are no real surprises in the NHL draft in terms of who gets selected - Alex Edler situations are complete unicorns - and good NHL amateur scouting is looking at the same player that every other NHL team has watched 30 times and seeing something different.

If you have a small team of really good amateur scouts watching as many games as possible, you're giving your best people the most information to make the best selections with the smallest amount of noise.

Like, I bet you could have just Judd Brackett as a team's entire amateur scouting group and take just the guys he likes, and you'd probably have a top-10 drafting team in the league.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

Exactly what I would do. I wish we had the balls to fire Green earlier and hire Q. f*** the Panthers looking good.

It's pretty crazy how many great coaches have been available since Benning took over. I wanted Trotz both in 2014 and 2018. I can appreciate not all coaches would want to move to Vancouver though.

 

[Buresflyingelbow]

I’d unload whatever expiring contracts for picks and prospects. I’d replace the coaching staff and try to promote a “super scout” into an assistant GM position. I’d focus on a RHD who can play the PP and PK who is top pairing (Seth Jones) type. My focus would be salary put into the top 6 and top 4 and have prospects fill in the rest after a respected third line Centre was acquired.

 

[Bubbles]

Pretty much everything is on TV now. Obviously you'd probably need a couple extra scouts on the ground watching the Slovakian Jr. league or whatever, but those would be exceptions. The whole NHL scouting system is still based in 1975 when the only way to watch a prospect was to send some old retired player to sit in a cold rink somewhere to see him.

If you have a team of, like, 30 scouts you're going to have 30 different opinions (many of them bad) about who to rank in a certain spot. And the one or two guys who are on the ball and killing it are going to get drowned in a sea of noise.

Baseball is a very different sport because you have so many HS kids spread all across America. You're weeding through tens of thousands of players to find a gem, and you need a lot of guys on the ground for that. In hockey, basically everyone is in the CHL/USHL/NCAA/Euro Jrs. And there are only a couple hundred guys in a given age year eligible in a given year. There are no real surprises in the NHL draft in terms of who gets selected - Alex Edler situations are complete unicorns - and good NHL amateur scouting is looking at the same player that every other NHL team has watched 30 times and seeing something different.

If you have a small team of really good amateur scouts watching as many games as possible, you're giving your best people the most information to make the best selections with the smallest amount of noise.

Like, I bet you could have just Judd Brackett as a team's entire amateur scouting group and take just the guys he likes, and you'd probably have a top-10 drafting team in the league.

So I guess the key is to keep a few smart scouts, and ditch the rest. Hire a bunch of video guys that aren't biased. The problem is, there might be too much video to crunch. A lot of scouting is still word of mouth, like a junior coach talking to an agent, and letting them know. Also, they get to see a player for a full season, as opposed to scouts that can only watch 8 or 10 hours of video a day.

Legacy jobs like ex-Canucks and nepotism (Benning's son) are impossible to avoid I suppose. I would relegate them to unimportant jobs.

 

[Josepho]

There was literally a user on the prospects board (don't remember his name but think he was a Jets fan) on this site who did a shit ton of shift-by-shift videos by himself, it's definitely possible to have a strong enough video staff.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

Courtesy of @I am toxic

 

[Shareefruck]

Fire Weisbrod, then build a Ring of Dishonor around Rogers Arena and start by inducting Aquilini, Benning, Weisbrod, and Messier out of pure pettiness, forgetting that Aquilini is actually my boss, then proceed to get fired by Aquilini before being able to bring about any actual positive changes to the club, bringing everything back to square one by being replaced by some new Aquilini lap-dog that ends up being just as bad as Benning.

 

[RobertKron]

IIRC, the Sabres promoted their video scouting guy to director when Benning went to Boston in ‘06.

 

[I am toxic]

Courtesy of @I am toxic

 

[lennor]

Why has no one said “give Thomas Gradin a raise” yet?

 

[mossey3535]

Is there cap space for the incoming GM to do anything? Just because he's not here doesn't mean the f***ed up situation Benning has put us in goes with him.

I guess just try to trade whatever I can away. Replace every overpriced vet I can with bargain basement UFA signings which will continue to be plentiful due to flat cap and the continuing deflation of mid-level veteran UFA contracts which was beginning to happen anyhow.

Put Eriksson on Lupul Island somehow.

Keep drafting well.

I mean what else is there to do really in terms of the roster?

I guess I would re-implement a lot of the cutting edge stuff Gillis had in place and keep looking for innovation in athletic performance, health/nutrition, and real-time player metrics. Yeah some of it seemed kooky but it's dumb to stop doing them if you can get even a small advantage.

EDIT - make sure Weisbrod and anyone in hockey operations who is somehow aligned with either Weisbrod or Benning is purged. I think the business side has actually done pretty well since Benning/Linden came in.

 

[RobertKron]

Why has no one said “give Thomas Gradin a raise” yet?

As we know his contract isn’t up?

 

[mossey3535]

if you have a big-ass plan that needs numbers but doesn't have numbers, I immediately dismissed your post

 

[mossey3535]

3. Pour tons of money into drafting. The Canucks should have a monopoly on BCHL and WHL players, and yet they are amongst the worst in the NHL drafting from those leagues. Every European country should have 5 scouts, with a director of European scouting in charge.

5. Steal the Blackhawks European pro scouting, or just copy their model. They have been signing free agents on the cheap for years, and they've hit on more gems than they have missed. All it costs is money. As far as I know, they are the only team in the NHL doing this successfully. (Panarin, Kubalik, Gustafsson)

6. Never get sentimental about any player. No one should be "untouchable". Listen to every offer and get opinions from smart people that I've hired. If the right offer came for Petey, you do it.

What do those books say about drafting? It's interesting that you propose spending more money on scouting and MS proposes less.

A lot of the sports analytics papers show that you can use data methods to extract consensus from scouting reports. From that perspective it would be better to have more scouts - with more reports you'd have more data to analyze.

 

[MS]

So I guess the key is to keep a few smart scouts, and ditch the rest. Hire a bunch of video guys that aren't biased. The problem is, there might be too much video to crunch. A lot of scouting is still word of mouth, like a junior coach talking to an agent, and letting them know. Also, they get to see a player for a full season, as opposed to scouts that can only watch 8 or 10 hours of video a day.

Legacy jobs like ex-Canucks and nepotism (Benning's son) are impossible to avoid I suppose. I would relegate them to unimportant jobs.

I mean, you don't have to see *every* game every prospect plays. And I don't think you'd see less games of a player this way? And I'm not saying get rid of in-person scouting entirely. Your smaller team would still be out there watching guys. But they could also watch 5-6 games that the video guys put into 1-hour blocks while they were sitting in a hotel room in Moose Jaw.

My biggest thing is that too many opinions is never good. If you have a guy like Judd Brackett who, based on his USHL results, is a f***ing outstanding scout and projector of talent ... you want that guy seeing more games and having more input on more players, as opposed to having the strength of his voice diluted by opinions from Ron Delorme and Brandon Benning and 30 other guys.

 

[MS]

What do those books say about drafting? It's interesting that you propose spending more money on scouting and MS proposes less.

A lot of the sports analytics papers show that you can use data methods to extract consensus from scouting reports. From that perspective it would be better to have more scouts - with more reports you'd have more data to analyze.

The problem with consensus is that you end up dulling your blade and making a whole bunch of really average picks, and never getting guys someone really wants and believes in. You won't be a top drafting team by going with consensus. Although you probably won't get the worst results in the league, either.

If you want consensus, you might as well just save $ millions by abolishing your amateur scouting staff entirely and just going off consensus from the 15-20 drafting publications out there which are available for consumption.

Also, per your original sentence I'm not sure if I'd 'spend less' ... I'd just spend very differently.

 

[Burke's Evil Spirit]

The way video scouting works now, you don't watch entire games. You get video packages of every shift a given prospect takes - 15/20 minutes total per game. There are companies whose entire business models involves selling these to NHL/scouting orgs.

 

[Bubbles]

What do those books say about drafting? It's interesting that you propose spending more money on scouting and MS proposes less.

A lot of the sports analytics papers show that you can use data methods to extract consensus from scouting reports. From that perspective it would be better to have more scouts - with more reports you'd have more data to analyze.

In Moneyball, it was all about OBP (on base percentage) and other metrics that other baseball guys were not looking at. This was also in 2002 so a lot of teams have caught up in that regard. The A's also valued college guys more than high school guys.

Billy Beane, however, was forced to do this because his owner was a cheapskate and would not spend to the cap. The A's were merely trying to compete. That's why it's a slightly different situation with the Canucks, at least Aquaman is willing to spend to the cap.

In Soccernomics, there is no draft. But some of the main principles are:

1. Use the wisdom of crowds.
2. Certain nationalites are overvauled.
3. Older players are overvauled.
4. Sell any player when another club offers more than he is worth.
5. Replace your best players even before you sell them.

There's a lot more but I don't want to copy verbatim.

In regards to hockey, I would only say there needs more advance stats that we can gather on a player, the better. I'm not sure what those stats are but hockey still looks at +/- or other simple stats.

 

[CpatainCanuck]

The way video scouting works now, you don't watch entire games. You get video packages of every shift a given prospect takes - 15/20 minutes total per game. There are companies whose entire business models involves selling these to NHL/scouting orgs.

It seems you miss out on the players that aren't already on everybody's radar then. A lot of the great drafting coups in nhl history came about because some Scout just happened to see an unheralded player while he was actually scouting some other player.

 

[Nona Di Giuseppe]

Pretty much everything is on TV now. Obviously you'd probably need a couple extra scouts on the ground watching the Slovakian Jr. league or whatever, but those would be exceptions. The whole NHL scouting system is still based in 1975 when the only way to watch a prospect was to send some old retired player to sit in a cold rink somewhere to see him.

If you have a team of, like, 30 scouts you're going to have 30 different opinions (many of them bad) about who to rank in a certain spot. And the one or two guys who are on the ball and killing it are going to get drowned in a sea of noise.

Baseball is a very different sport because you have so many HS kids spread all across America. You're weeding through tens of thousands of players to find a gem, and you need a lot of guys on the ground for that. In hockey, basically everyone is in the CHL/USHL/NCAA/Euro Jrs. And there are only a couple hundred guys in a given age year eligible in a given year. There are no real surprises in the NHL draft in terms of who gets selected - Alex Edler situations are complete unicorns - and good NHL amateur scouting is looking at the same player that every other NHL team has watched 30 times and seeing something different.

If you have a small team of really good amateur scouts watching as many games as possible, you're giving your best people the most information to make the best selections with the smallest amount of noise.

Like, I bet you could have just Judd Brackett as a team's entire amateur scouting group and take just the guys he likes, and you'd probably have a top-10 drafting team in the league.

in this vein, i think the benefit of having your best scout not travel; provide more time to watch tape.

i'd likely employ lesser scouts to go and video unaired games to send their results to actual scouts too.

EDIT: i'm reading this is how ppl are doing it now

 

[DingDongCharlie]

I’d trade Hughes, petterson and Horvat to Edmonton and resign after.

 

[Bubbles]

The problem with consensus is that you end up dulling your blade and making a whole bunch of really average picks, and never getting guys someone really wants and believes in. You won't be a top drafting team by going with consensus. Although you probably won't get the worst results in the league, either.

If you want consensus, you might as well just save $ millions by abolishing your amateur scouting staff entirely and just going off consensus from the 15-20 drafting publications out there which are available for consumption.

Also, per your original sentence I'm not sure if I'd 'spend less' ... I'd just spend very differently.

Didn't Melvin's Potato GM show that we'd be probably middle of the pack in terms of drafting if we went the potato method? I suppose there's no scientific proof or evidence in terms of does more money equal more success in drafting. I did a google search about best drafting teams and the answers are all over the place. And there's no financial information on how the "successful" teams are spending their draft money.

 

[SeawaterOnIce]

.

In Soccernomics, there is no draft. But some of the main principles are:

1. Use the wisdom of crowds.
2. Certain nationalites are overvauled.
3. Older players are overvauled.
4. Sell any player when another club offers more than he is worth.
5. Replace your best players even before you sell them.

There's a lot more but I don't want to copy verbatim.

Whitecapsnomics

1) Sell your best players or,
2) Let them go once they don't take your lowball offer
3) Sign some rejects
4) Watch fans leave

 

[mossey3535]

The problem with consensus is that you end up dulling your blade and making a whole bunch of really average picks, and never getting guys someone really wants and believes in. You won't be a top drafting team by going with consensus. Although you probably won't get the worst results in the league, either.

If you want consensus, you might as well just save $ millions by abolishing your amateur scouting staff entirely and just going off consensus from the 15-20 drafting publications out there which are available for consumption.

Also, per your original sentence I'm not sure if I'd 'spend less' ... I'd just spend very differently.

To be clear, analytical consensus isn't getting all those voices together and getting them to agree. It takes all the scouting reports and extracts what they think quantitatively. You wouldn't be listening to their personal voices or opinions as in traditional personal collaboration. Obviously there's still a place for that but the point of analysis is to normalize scouting results to some extent and take out that personal voice.