THN Archive: What Scouts Look For at World Juniors

This story from THN's Jan. 3, 2003 edition broke down exactly what hockey scouts are looking for in the best-on-best world juniors.

The IIHF World Junior Championship always draws scouts from across the hockey world. In this feature story from THN’s Jan. 3, 2003 edition – Vol. 56, Issue 18 – writer Alan Adams put the spotlight on exactly what scouts are looking for at the world juniors.

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The World Junior Championship is the only chance scouts get to see the best of the under-20 group of players face off against one another. The main thing scouts want is to see how those players perform under extreme pressure.

“You look for (the players) to survive, if the good instincts are there and if they compete, if they have good hockey sense,” Hakan Andersson, chief European scout for the Detroit Red Wings, told Adams in the story.

“What you are doing is evaluating the players you have drafted to see how they have developed and how they fit into the next step,” added then-Atlanta Thrashers GM Don Waddell.

The biggest thing many scouts will be looking for is the talent levels of under-20 players who aren’t yet drafted. A savvy pick at the following NHL draft may have come from what scouts have seen in the previous WJC, which puts the pressure solely on the scouts and teams doing their homework at the tournament.

“The pressure is on, wherever you pick,” Andersson said. “I remember some of the guys telling Kenny (Holland, Detroit’s GM) he couldn’t expect us to find a player because we didn’t pick in the first round. He said, ‘Well, you will have to find them in the other rounds.’ We realize now we had better know our guys.”

Vol. 56, No. 18, Jan. 3, 2003

By Alan Adams

You see them in the stands, their hands usually tucked into their jacket pockets, as they take in games at the World Junior Championship.

They are NHL scouts, hockey’s bloodhounds, and it is their job to scrutinize the teenagers on the ice in an ongoing effort to project what kind of NHLer they will become.

For scouts, the World Junior Championship is their only chance all season to see best-on-best hockey. The scouts won’t be alone in checking out the pool of players who have either been drafted or are draft-eligible. The WJC always attracts NHL GMs or assistant GMs and they too watch who is on the ice, with one eye on the present and the other on the future.

What is it the eyes of the NHL are looking for?

“You look for (the players) to survive, if the good instincts are there and if they compete, if they have good hockey sense,” says Hakan Andersson, chief European scout for the Detroit Red Wings.

Because most of the players in the WJC have been drafted, the tournament serves as a barometer to measure where the prospect fits in the future plans of the NHL team that drafted him.

“What you are doing is evaluating the players you have drafted to see how they have developed and how they fit into the next step,” says Atlanta GM Don Waddell.

The tournament helps members of the scouting fraternity in other ways, too. It’s easier to judge a player’s talent when the game is being contested by teams of fairly equal caliber, as they are at the WJC. The games will be quick and play will swing back and forth. The drama is increased by how much the prize means to the players. Teams are well organized and well coached and there is a lot at stake in terms of national pride.

When it comes to watching actual games, scouts are looking at, in no particular order, (a) the players their team has drafted; (b) players drafted by other teams; and (c) draft-eligible players.

A scout can evaluate not only where a player is in comparison to the best teenagers in the world, but whether he has character. The WJC is a character check and, with a lot at stake, players need to rise to the occasion. If a player stands above the pack - and not just by scoring - it is a good indication of his character. 

And when the tournament is over, scouts leave knowing they have seen players multiple times in a relatively short span, which gives an idea of their consistency. Then there’s the wild-card factor. Nik Antropov was a bit of an unknown when he made his debut with Kazakhstan at the 1998 WJC in Finland. Few scouts knew where Kazakhstan was, let alone had seen Antropov play. His performance helped him get drafted 10th overall by Toronto later that year.

That said, scouts are careful not to read too much into what happens at the WJC. The tournament is widely accepted as one where 18- and 19-year-old players stand out. The number of 17-year-olds who have made a name for themselves at the WJC is very limited. Anaheim’s Paul Kariya, for example, hardly saw the ice in his first tournament in Germany in 1992. Adam Graves of the San Jose Sharks and Colorado’s Joe Sakic were on a checking line for Canada at the 1988 WJC in Moscow and even Mario Lemieux played a back-seat role for much of the 1983 tourney.

“There is no such a thing as a make-or-break tournament or make-or-break game. When that happens, you are reaching for straws,” says David Conte, New Jersey’s director of scouting.

Looking to Halifax and Sydney, the scouts will be busy. There are a lot of players of significance in the tournament who are eligible for the 2003 and 2004 drafts and each scout wants to find that one diamond in the rough.

“The pressure is on, wherever you pick,” says Andersson. “I remember some of the guys telling Kenny (Holland, Detroit’s GM) he couldn’t expect us to find a player because we didn’t pick in the first round. He said, ‘Well, you will have to find them in the other rounds.’ We realize now we had better know our guys.”

The WJC is one of many stops the scouts take on the winding road to knowing their players.

“It is knowledge-friendly. It is draft friendly and it is internally-friendly in terms of your own prospects,” says Conte.

And you don’t get that in any other tournament. 

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