Well that would be Steve Yzerman.
Pro scouts doesn't get to decide what players the team acquires, thats GM's job. What pro scouts do, is that they watch the games, write a report and sent it to GM. After that i can see 3 different scenarios.
1. Yzerman says "nah, not interested"
2. Yzerman is interested and perhaps tries to make a trade but the other team wants something that Yzerman isn't willing give.
3. In the UFA markets Yzerman could say "nah, not interested" or he is interested and makes an offer but the player in question says "thanks but no thanks, im signing with the other team"
Blaming pro scouting for bad players is pointless, it's the GM who decides and GM sees every game his team play. And he sees these players play against his team, he knows exactly what he's getting into when he signs the likes of Copp, Chiarot and Compher's.
I've been a pretty loud voice in the "I'm concerned about our pro scouting" crowd. I look at his time in Tampa, and he just hasn't had the same success here for building our defense. At first when Tampa was rebuilding, Yzerman was asking a young Hedman to carry the likes of Marc Andre Bergeron and Eric Brewer which he did somewhat effectively (sound familiar?)
But in Tampa, when he chose to turn the corner, he added Stralman to be a proper partner for Hedman and then built an incredible defense. Yzerman built the whole Tampa defense from scratch besides Hedman. That was the only Tampa draft pick on that defense. He brought in Sergachev, McDonagh, Cernak, and Stralman. He found a solid rotation of effective support guys. Were there some misses along the way? Yep. And Cernak was scouted as an amateur though they didn't draft him. Overall though his management of the defense in Tampa, built largely on pro-scouting, was great. He assembled that cup winning defense.
Ghost was a solid signing. Walman was a solid trade acquisition. The rest of his moves on defense here have been misses-including then getting rid of Walman, his biggest hit. Can we blame some of them on being stop gaps rather than real targets? Yep. Are we clearly taking a more draft heavy approach to this defense? Yep. Do I think some of his players would look better if the team as a whole was better? Yep.
Even when I afford Yzerman every excuse, the defense he's built is inexcusable. It speaks to a deep problem with our process and I'm worried about what happens when we need a 2nd LD to play babysitter for ASP. We can't afford to keep getting these choices wrong. So maybe you're right, and Yzerman is chiefly responsible. Then we need some pro scouts that can challenge his vision. The loose cannon is the only one that hits its mark when the ship is off course. We either have pro scouts making bad recommendations or failing to convince Yzerman to follow their good ones. Either way, they've failed at their job.
I'd love to hold Yzerman accountable but in most ways, he's an excellent GM. His amateur scouting and development has been great. Any fears I had about the second round onward are slowly being mitigated by the performances of guys like Buchelnikov. The first round has been great. He gets good value on re-signing his important players. Those two factors are probably the most important for an NHL GM. Add in that he usually wins his trades and we'd be crazy to fire Yzerman over some bad UFA signings and a dumb trade. Thus you address that issue another way, with a few pro scouts that can tell the difference between Jakub Kindl and Anton Stralman or Ben Chiarot and Ryan McDonagh.
