[Claeren]

I am mostly concerned with how they are doing their jobs. Its seems like a very old school mentality, doing it the same way year after year after year.

Are there new hockey concepts that should be incorporated into this old schol thinking? Are there ways of thinking about talent and performance beyond how they were looking at those concepts in 1992 (or whatever), are there technologies or amalgamated data that can be used to help identify talent or prospective talent form all of the raw data available coming out of the various junior leagues?

A forum/social media could be set-up for people like us, fans, to identify and scout talent across the league. Multiplying by many times over the total amount of scouting hours.

Computers could sift through CHL radio/tv broadcasts and count how often players names are mentioned, to find underrated players often involved in the play. Or state of the art computer software developed to identify strong play characteristics of players in all of the leagues.

Programs could be set-up to show what are desirable combinations of traits in players, and then players abilities could be graded by scouts and fed into that program to get a list of the most desirable players at any draft position. (IE, players over 6'3 should score at least 7/10 in speed to be competitive at NHL level, etc)

All sorts of ideas. People can say they would cost a lot of money but we are talking about a business that geenrates what, $60M/year in revenue??


I am guessing they are scouting almost exactly like they were 10 years ago and there is no way you are ever the best at something this competitive when you let new tools and ways of thinking pass you by just to stay true to some old school hockey mentality.

I can virtually guarentee most of the Flames scouting is being done with excel work sheets and email.... yikes.



Claeren.