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News Article: Rick Pracey Hired as Director of Amateur Scouting

His work in Colorado definitely wasn’t great. I don’t mind a lot of the Philly picks during his time there but who knows how much he was involved with those.

I’m not opposed to this hire but I’m definitely not sold.

Either way I’m glad Tyler Wright is out. Our drafting outside of the top 10 hasn’t been close to acceptable.
 
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AddyTheWrath said:
Pretty huge news. Jackson making changes already?

Anyone know anything about the guy?

Saw this on Twitter:

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whenever I see tweets or comments about 1 year of drafting--I asked "how many drafts has he has been a part of"?

the good news is he has 21 drafts behind him--the bad news. What players have the flyers taken that he wanted?

We have 21 years of drafting for him. How much was he involved in drafting Nolan Patrick so high? I remember that injuries were a big part of his draft year. In my opinion the Flyers have not drafted and developed well over the past 10 years and are now just embracing the rebuild
 
Jumptheshark said:
whenever I see tweets or comments about 1 year of drafting--I asked "how many drafts has he has been a part of"?

the good news is he has 21 drafts behind him--the bad news. What players have the flyers taken that he wanted?

We have 21 years of drafting for him. How much was he involved in drafting Nolan Patrick so high? I remember that injuries were a big part of his draft year. In my opinion the Flyers have not drafted and developed well over the past 10 years and are now just embracing the rebuild
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Wasn’t Patrick ranked pretty high during his draft year?
 
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Jumptheshark said:
whenever I see tweets or comments about 1 year of drafting--I asked "how many drafts has he has been a part of"?

the good news is he has 21 drafts behind him--the bad news. What players have the flyers taken that he wanted?

We have 21 years of drafting for him. How much was he involved in drafting Nolan Patrick so high? I remember that injuries were a big part of his draft year. In my opinion the Flyers have not drafted and developed well over the past 10 years and are now just embracing the rebuild
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Almost everyone had him in the top 2 at the time… Including the Bobfather.
 
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The amateur scouting here has been trash for a long, long time, this organization can't draft for shit unless they're getting gift wrapped a top 3 pick.

Not sure if Pracey is some big upgrade, but I guess Jackson did not like Wright.

Taking a wild guess and saying maybe Jackson isn't big on the Broberg, Holloway, Bourgault, etc. picks.

This makes it more likely that Holland is dead man walking as Wright was Holland's guy brought here from Detroit.
 
Hopefully this move means we won't see any more picks thrown away on fourth liners and defensive defensemen with no talent. Wright seemed to absolutely love those types.

This draft here always stuck out to me as one of the worst drafts I'd ever seen:
211b3a7f7f4b4447707afb9be4754cb5.png


Wright had six picks in the first three rounds and used every single one of them on players that needed a miracle to even score at the AHL level then followed that up by picking a bunch of CHL fourth liners and third pairing defensive defensemen.

It's like he had absolutely no concept of projecting players at the NHL level.
 
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McDNicks17 said:
I like it. Wright was such an OBC hire. His track record with Detroit was horrific.

Pracey might not be anything special, but it's almost impossible to be worse than Wright.
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Possibly, granted since Wright joined the team he's had these picks in those 4 years:

3-1sts (numbers 14, 22, and 32 and one of them has already been traded in a trade yielding Ekholm)
1-2nd (drafted in 2023)
1-3rd (2021 draft)
2-4ths (2020, 2021)
3-5ths
5-6ths
4-7ths

Exactly 6 picks in the top 100 of any draft over a 4 year period. Players drafted outside the top 100 seldomly impact within 5-6 years. So we don't really know what to expect.

The only 5 picks he made in the top 100 still with the team are:
- Holloway who people seem to like,
- Bourgeault who still has a chance granted there were others in his range I'd rather have right now, -- Munzenburger who's a slow burn defenseman working his way through NCAA
- Carter Savoie (100th overall) who's had two years pro. Nothing special but not a complete right off yet.
- Beau Akey, way too early to tell.

He's also had some further back that are showing promise so far like Tullio, Wanner, and Petrov.

His record in Edmonton is a big pile of "yet TBD".
 
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Fixed to Ruin said:
If you look at that draft in its entirety, the Colorado pick was the only one chosen in the 1st round who didn't play any NHL games. They also passed on alot of significant players who went in the next few picks that i didn't highlight. (e.g. Kempe, Demko, Barbashev)
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Sounds like he meets the drafting criteria around here. :|

kidding aside, will wait to pass judgement. I do like that the new guy is shaking things up In an area that has not been an organizational strength for years. complacency is a disease
 
Tarus said:
That's a bit out of left field considering Wright was Holland's guy coming over from Detroit.

This Pracey guy had a rep of being able to find talent with the Aves a decade ago, but looks like he was fired from that same job for too many high profile misses and ignoring the euro market. Generally takes half a decade to see how an amateur scout pans out, so hope this is a good hire because it'll heavily impact the team's success down the road.

Edit - looks like he hit a homerun in his first season, then managed to get just 3 NHLers in the next 5 drafts, two of which were drafted in the top 3(Landeskog/McKinnon). How the hell did this guy get a rep of "finding talent"? :laugh:
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They compared him with everyone else.
 
bone said:
Possibly, granted since Wright joined the team he's had these picks in those 4 years:

3-1sts (numbers 14, 22, and 32 and one of them has already been traded in a trade yielding Ekholm)
1-2nd (drafted in 2023)
1-3rd (2021 draft)
2-4ths (2020, 2021)
3-5ths
5-6ths
4-7ths

Exactly 6 picks in the top 100 of any draft over a 4 year period. Players drafted outside the top 100 seldomly impact within 5-6 years. So we don't really know what to expect.

The only 5 picks he made in the top 100 still with the team are:
- Holloway who people seem to like,
- Bourgeault who still has a chance granted there were others in his range I'd rather have right now, -- Munzenburger who's a slow burn defenseman working his way through NCAA
- Carter Savoie (100th overall) who's had two years pro. Nothing special but not a complete right off yet.
- Beau Akey, way too early to tell.

He's also had some further back that are showing promise so far like Tullio, Wanner, and Petrov.

His record in Edmonton is a big pile of "yet TBD".
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I'd say most of his picks here are trending like his picks have in the past.

Makes a "safe" pick. Player looks alright. Player doesn't have the talent to make an impact.


I've never been a Wright fan though. I can't stand guys who throw away picks on "safe" players and that's basically always been Wright's MO.

Someone over on Twitter ran decades worth of scouting reports through a system that tagged key words and then tallied the success rate of players with various key words. Players with the word "safe" in their scouting report had the lowest success rate of any key word. Even lower than "enforcer" haha.

Wright seemed to be your classic OBC hire who suffered from thinking they're the smartest person in the room though and completely ignored trends like that.
 
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McDNicks17 said:
I'd say most of his picks here are trending like his picks have in the past.

Makes a "safe" pick. Player looks alright. Player doesn't have the talent to make an impact.


I've never been a Wright fan though. I can't stand guys who throw away picks on "safe" players and that's basically always been Wright's MO.

Someone over on Twitter ran decades worth of scouting reports through a system that tagged key words and then tallied the success rate of players with various key words. Players with the word "safe" in their scouting report had the lowest success rate of any key word. Even lower than "enforcer" haha.

Wright seemed to be your classic OBC hire who suffered from thinking they're the smartest person in the room though and completely ignored trends like that.
Click to expand...

Now I am curious, what was the key word that had the most success?
 
Tarus said:
That's a bit out of left field considering Wright was Holland's guy coming over from Detroit.

This Pracey guy had a rep of being able to find talent with the Aves a decade ago, but looks like he was fired from that same job for too many high profile misses and ignoring the euro market. Generally takes half a decade to see how an amateur scout pans out, so hope this is a good hire because it'll heavily impact the team's success down the road.

Edit - looks like he hit a homerun in his first season, then managed to get just 3 NHLers in the next 5 drafts, two of which were drafted in the top 3(Landeskog/McKinnon). How the hell did this guy get a rep of "finding talent"? :laugh:
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Not surprising in the least. GMKH in final year of deal, he’s not buying green bananas, new CEO and PrezHO comes in, organizationally above Holland. Ken is on the way out, new man is preparing org for the future in his vision.
 
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Fixed to Ruin said:
Now I am curious, what was the key word that had the most success?
Click to expand...

I don't know if they talked about any other specific words. I just remember safe being referenced in a tweet.

I think the gist of it was prospects with some form of shooting and playmaking mentioned without any mention of intangibles had the highest chance to outproduce their draft status.

 
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McDNicks17 said:
I don't know if they talked about any other specific words. I just remember safe being referenced in a tweet.

I think the gist of it was prospects with some form of shooting and playmaking mentioned without any mention of intangibles had the highest chance to outproduce their draft status.

Click to expand...

Cool graph.

For anything other than a top 3 pick, or anyone who isn't guaranteed to be a superstar type player, I would be drafting people with skating and stickhandling ability. That's basically all I would try and focus on. Who can actually play with the puck at a high level. Holloway can, Bourgault can -- I like both of those picks. Akey can't make plays with the puck, Broberg can't make plays with the puck, Schaefer couldn't make plays with the puck. Bouchard can. Puljujarvi couldn't, Yamo in juniors could but obviously a rare exception where he is just so small and slow as an NHLer.

Bedard is a guy who I think is going to struggle because he can't skate well enough. Destroys juniors scoring from everywhere but for him to have success he would need to play a Mackinnon style game, which he can't. He's like Yakupov in this regard. Scoring from everywhere in junior with a wild shot. Bedard the better playmaker OF COURSE, but the speed is going to limit him significantly at the NHL level unless he somehow ends up with Crosby level strength in the corners.

Going forward we need to be focusing on defencemen who can pass the puck and stickhandle out of danger. We should have been doing this for the last decade. Every great defenceman in the league possesses great poise with the puck and elite stickhandling. We don't have a single D like this. Bouchard possibly but he operates in a near-opposite manner as the prototypical elite D as he essentially fakes people out by doing nothing at all, haha. Moving in slow motion out there but damn he has potential.

As for the hire, no clue who he is, but our drafting has been abysmal in terms of actual NHL production. Can't hurt.
 
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