Draft day is 'scouts' day'

— -- The tendency is to view them as part of a global hockey spreadsheet. Defensemen versus forwards versus goalies, speed and skill versus size and physicality, shoots left versus right, percentage of body fat versus endurance test scores, mid-term rankings versus final rankings. But these players who will be selected this weekend at the NHL draft in Raleigh, N.C., have been observed over the course of weeks, months, even years, from the chilly recesses of hockey rinks from the Slovakian town of Topolcany to Rimouski, Quebec. They are flesh and blood and for each scout they represent not just a pile of data but a living, breathing form -- their form. "You really fall in love with every kid you pick," said longtime scout Paul Henry who now advises teams, players and agents on psychological evaluations of players. "You live and you die with him until he's finished hockey." Each team sends out a team of scouts across the hockey globe. Each scout sees hundreds of players in hundreds of games. Evaluations are processed, comprehensive tests are performed, and statistical data broken down in a manner worthy of a Harvard MBA statistics course. Then, over the course of two days at the NHL's annual entry draft, those scouts are called on to make recommendations on perhaps nine of those young men, men on whom they will stake their reputation, and their careers. "It's the scouts' day," said Henry who has been on hand for roughly 20 drafts since starting in the business in the early 1980s with the New York Rangers. "Our staff works all year preparing for this day," added Toronto Maple Leafs general manager John Ferguson Jr. "It's the culmination of literally a year, sometimes years of work." The work is often arduous, often undertaken in remote locales in the most hazardous of weather conditions. Players must be compared against their own past performances and against their peers. Players and coaches must be interviewed and data analyzed. And more often than not, especially in the later rounds, it often comes down to trusting some intangible gut instinct in making a final recommendation, the results of which won't be known perhaps for years. "It's like final exam day only you don't get your marks back for five or six years," added Vaughn Karpan, director of amateur scouting and the point man at the Phoenix Coyotes' draft table. "It's the single-most important day for each calendar year for our team. For me it's very, very breathless. It's devastating. It's elating." "It's like borrowing money to bet on a horse but telling the guy who lends you the money the horse might not run for four or five years," said Barry Trapp, the former director of scouting for the Canadian Hockey Association, now the director of amateur scouting for the Maple Leafs. Sometimes things get downright ugly. "You go to war for every guy you draft and it's not pretty," Henry said. Nashville Predators general manager David Poile recalls the team's western amateur scout Rick Knickle being "quite sour" at the end of the first day of the 2001 draft in Toronto that the team hadn't selected Jordin Tootoo, a player Knickle had ranked much higher. The Predators eventually traded up and selected Tootoo, who last season became the first Inuit to play in the NHL. Yet it's that very conviction that GMs are looking for in their scouting staffs. "If scouts can't get excited about the players they're watching, you don't want them," Karpan said. "It's as simple as that." "There is a great deal of jockeying and challenging and competing going on," amongst the draft team, added Ferguson, who will oversee his first draft this year. "There is passion and we foster that emotion." By early fall of each season, amateur scouts have compiled their list of prospects, cross-referencing against junior, college and European club team schedules, hoping to see all of the players in whom they're interested by Christmas and then fine-tuning the list from there. If a scout is lucky, said Karpan, he sees a player at the right moment, in a "defining" game. This season, though, many top prospects suffered through inconsistent years making an already complicated, emotional process all the more uncertain. As a result, scouts must possess an unwavering belief the assessments they've made are correct. It can be a daunting task considering the financial impact. "It's not simply running around to a lot of hockey games and eating hot dogs and then jumping in your car and going to another game," Karpan said. "There's a mental toughness that's important for the scouts too." And, he said, if a scout starts worrying about the money end of it, he might as well pack it in. Henry recalls seeing Zdeno Chara play in just one game in Prague during his draft year. The mammoth Ottawa Senators defender made a play that was reminiscent of Hall of Famer Serge Savard and Henry whistled out loud, nodding at another scout who was watching. But Henry had seen Swedish youngster Marcus Nilson play 10 or 15 times, so the Panthers drafted Nilson with the 20th pick in 1996. Chara went to the Islanders with the 56th pick. "I was a lot more comfortable with Nilson and I didn't have the [nerve] to pick Chara based on seeing him just the once," Henry said. "Those are the things that happen." Nilson was deemed expendable by Florida last March and went on to have a solid playoff with the Stanley Cup finalist Calgary Flames. Under Darryl Sutter, "he's now becoming what we projected him to be," Henry said. Chara, of course, was nominated this season for the Norris Trophy as the league's best defenseman. Henry also recalled the 1995 draft and how he liked Shane Doan, who went seventh overall to the Winnipeg Jets. But had he gone to the Memorial Cup instead of scouting another competition, he'd have been more enamored with future Art Ross Trophy winner Jarome Iginla who went to Dallas at No. 11. "You have to take every opportunity to see kids because you never know what you're going to learn," Henry said. Sometimes the draft process becomes an agonizing exercise in clock-watching. Trapp recalls two years ago, watching as the Leafs moved ever so slowly to their second-round pick where they had their eye on Canadian junior star Matt Stajan. "I couldn't believe he was there," Trapp said of Stajan who made the Leafs out of camp last year and enjoyed a solid rookie season well ahead of schedule. "I thought he was one of the most underrated players." Last year, though, the Leafs had their eye on another prospect only to have him stolen out from under them by the team picking directly in front of them. "That's why you have your list," Trapp said. Ah, the list. Scattered around the arena floor at the RBC Center in Raleigh, each of the 30 teams is assessing the exact same pool of players. While they may approach the process with a wholly different blueprint, all teams create a list of players in the order they deem appropriate. Throughout draft weekend, GMs and directors of player personnel are monitoring the draft landscape, poised to trade up or down in order to get the player they want. Some teams may be willing to sacrifice a higher pick for the sake of adding more picks later in the draft, a strategy that may become more important for some depth-poor teams given the likelihood of a labor stoppage in the fall. Likewise, teams figuring there might not be hockey in the fall, may be more aggressive about moving up to capture a player that may have a better shot at becoming an impact player. Each pick then becomes a chip in high-stakes poker game. "It's knowing who your competitors are and trying to get inside their heads," Karpan said. "You've got to watch who's talking to one another." But, added Dallas Stars assistant general manager Les Jackson, "if you're looking over your shoulder there's a good chance you'll miss what's in front of you."

Scott Burnside is a freelance writer based in Atlanta and is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com.