[sureLoss]

Thought I would throw this in here... The Bruins have fired their Head of Amateur Scouting Wayne Smith

Smith, who was one of Peter Chiarelli’s first hires after he took over as Bruins GM in 2006, was hired as a scout, then became head scout a year later and oversaw a department that had done a strong drafting job and signed key college free agent Torey Krug, who was an integral piece of the roster that came within a late meltdown of going to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.

It seems rather odd, given that Chiarelli admits that Smith is his good friend and is a very good scout. Their prospect list was solid, ranking them 12th among NHL organizations in THN’s Future Watch edition in 2013.

“We wanted to freshen up our amateur scouting and shift things a little bit and we felt this was the way to do it,” Chiarelli said. “Wayne has done a good job and I’ll give him a good reference, but we wanted to inject some new life.”

Changes such as this one are rarely made unless there is a good reason, though. Word among people in the scouting community is that Smith, who has a long history of scouting both in the Ontario League and the NHL, is a very good evaluator of talent and a hard worker, but is more suited to be a regional scout than someone running a scouting department with a multi-million dollar budget and scouts all over the world. (A phone call and email to Smith were not immediately returned.)

http://www.thehockeynews.com/article...-odd-move.html