Will Scouch of Scouching Report has Announced He is Quitting

[majormajor]

I am just really annoyed that he is removing his content he made. It just feels like he is acknowledging that he was wrong in his opinions by doing that. I just wish he would have left his work still available for others but he has right to do whatever he wants with his public work since he owns it.

I still find some of his video work and tracking useful so I wish he kept it up.

But he's been doing it long enough now that his success as a scout should be an empirical question. Without checking rigorously I think his rankings have performed poorly. Don't take my word for it.

FWIW, Yannick St. Pierre works for the Habs now and you can still watch most of his old draft dynasty videos from 2020 on YouTube. It doesn't seem like Will actually would be required to remove his content especially if he's just doing freelance tracking work now.

 

[GermanSpitfire]

That's not a bad theory. It's incredibly odd to take all the old vids down. Unless, he hates hockey now or something lol.

I know a few individuals in this scene that have had to do this exact thing when being hired by a pro team - so that’s where the speculation comes from.

 

[Chainshot]

I hope he got a job and didn’t just burn out. Producing internet content is a rough business to be in, hyper competitive competition for eyeballs.

Most of the regular content creators I have interacted with have all had some level of commentary about how it can become a depression-inducing thing. Burn out happens and with how YT shuffles their rules and their algorithm possibly changing moment to moment, it's hard for those who are trying to make supplementary income too. Spending hours on something and it randomly failing to be seen by one's audience and all that... not as easy as it might seem at first blush.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

But once you post it, is it ever really gone?

 

[calder candidate]

Seem weird to quite without any notice, lot of people appreciated is work seem like if there was some notice he could have gotten a better send off. also weird to take all is stuff down since it would change anything for him to leave it up on youtube...
Clearly is goal seem to work in hockey but it seem like it isn't happeing any time soon...
It just seem like it is geting to be too much...
Anyway I enjoyed the work, good luck to him in all is futur project!

 

[TopC0rner]

I still find some of his video work and tracking useful so I wish he kept it up.

But he's been doing it long enough now that his success as a scout should be an empirical question. Without checking rigorously I think his rankings have performed poorly. Don't take my word for it.

FWIW, Yannick St. Pierre works for the Habs now and you can still watch most of his old draft dynasty videos from 2020 on YouTube. It doesn't seem like Will actually would be required to remove his content especially if he's just doing freelance tracking work now.

The truth is that it takes about 7 years for a draft to fully mature, which means an eternity to build empirical evidence (let's say you wanted 5 years, then you'd have to check his work back 12 years). Also, he "evolved" as time went on.

 

[majormajor]

The truth is that it takes about 7 years for a draft to fully mature, which means an eternity to build empirical evidence (let's say you wanted 5 years, then you'd have to check his work back 12 years). Also, he "evolved" as time went on.

The evidence doesn't fully settle for many years, but if for example you took Mesar over Kulich last year that's already looking bad. I'm okay with making judgments on a few years evidence. Some players are clearly on different tracks by then.

 

[vildurson]

The evidence doesn't fully settle for many years, but if for example you took Mesar over Kulich last year that's already looking bad. I'm okay with making judgments on a few years evidence. Some players are clearly on different tracks by then.

I had Kulich at 22 and Mesar 29. One test where I can qualify myself!

 

[Killerjas]

Any updates what he is up to now?

 

[LePerilsofPerreault]

If nothing else he was entertaining, he did some interviews with a sharks podcast about the draft not too long ago.

 

[Rabid Ranger]

Any updates what he is up to now?

Scouch surfing.

 

[MichaelFarrell]

Any updates what he is up to now?

There likely won’t be an update for a very long time and perhaps never. I don’t think he’ll be involved in hockey anymore in public setting like making YouTube videos or a blog.

he was very vague about what he was doing but very clear that he was done.

 

[AintLifeGrand]

I did not watch Winnipeg Jets preseason games, no.

I thought Lambert was pretty easily the most impressive player with the puck on this stick last year of any players in the draft. I can understand why people would find him appealing. My concern with him was how little that translated into anything in Liiga given his ++ skating/puck skills combination. My concerns with him are similar to someone like Athanasiou, as far as they have great individual/athletic ability, but do not use their teammates well enough and do not see the ice well enough to take advantage of those gifts like they should.

So Lambert doing well in the WHL does not really do anything for me personally. You can get by in the WHL with those flaws in your game.

Kemmells peformance since coming over > lambert

 

[The Colonel]

There likely won’t be an update for a very long time and perhaps never. I don’t think he’ll be involved in hockey anymore in public setting like making YouTube videos or a blog.

he was very vague about what he was doing but very clear that he was done.

It was a rather mysterious exit. Not sure if it's okay to speculate but I will just say usually that means something really good for somebody or something challenging.

 

[vildurson]

Do we have any other authors like Will who have stepped in on Youtube(or somewhere else) doing similar work? Around this time, would have been nice to see constant player reports from him even if you might not always agree on them.

 

[WeThreeKings]

Do we have any other authors like Will who have stepped in on Youtube(or somewhere else) doing similar work? Around this time, would have been nice to see constant player reports from him even if you might not always agree on them.

There's a couple guys showing up but I stopped watching because they're just bad..

 

[OHL4Life]

this may not be a fair or accurate question, but i have to ask, was he actually good at scouting? did his lists prove to be actually good? its easy for anyone to make a list and post it, i can do that in 5 minutes, but it doesnt mean im actually good at it and that i have the hockey intelligence to do it?

Many publications I would agree, but ISS was a scouting/ranking agency that was subscribed to by every NHL team, to some extent, there needed be some correlation between their rankings and what happens on draft day, that was the goal, and they achieved that nearly every year. Consistently projecting 85-95% of the top 30 guys every year for decades.

Anze Kopitar also credited ISS for him being drafted so high.

i think redline is the closet to that now as far as every nhl team having copies. i certainly dont talk to alot of nhl guys but redline is the one that is mentioned the most.

 

[MichaelFarrell]

this may not be a fair or accurate question, but i have to ask, was he actually good at scouting? did his lists prove to be actually good? its easy for anyone to make a list and post it, i can do that in 5 minutes, but it doesnt mean im actually good at it and that i have the hockey intelligence to do it?



i think redline is the closet to that now as far as every nhl team having copies. i certainly dont talk to alot of nhl guys but redline is the one that is mentioned the most.

He had his own datasets and player preferences. He put a ton of work into it for sure. He had some good picks and some misses. His video breakdowns were amazing. But, it’s not really about was he good or not for me.I respected his opinion but I still disagreed with him a lot.

Ultimately, his biggest contribution wasn’t about the accuracy of his scouting. It was about the fact he created some of the best content for a very small community of people interested in NHL prospects and the draft. He introduced me to a lot of prospects that I didn’t know about he helped me understand the game better as whole.

 

[OHL4Life]

He had his own datasets and player preferences. He put a ton of work into it for sure. He had some good picks and some misses. His video breakdowns were amazing. But, it’s not really about was he good or not for me.I respected his opinion but I still disagreed with him a lot.

Ultimately, his biggest contribution wasn’t about the accuracy of his scouting. It was about the fact he created some of the best content for a very small community of people interested in NHL prospects and the draft. He introduced me to a lot of prospects that I didn’t know about he helped me understand the game better as whole.

thats fine, i just think that the independent hockey community is lacking in alot of talent right now. theres been alot of guys move into chl, ushl and nhl teams and quality guys knocking on the nhl door is not there.

if its a hobby and hes donig it for fun, thats fine as well, but i really am not sure if he has the actual ability to be a pro level scout based on his reports and views. i can have my own metrics, but it doesnt make them correct. if he wants to be one, there is a much longer road that would involve getting out to rinks and interacting, but some dont really like putting that type of work in.

maybe he disapeared because he thoguht this work would get him an nhl job? when it doesnt come i can see someone not sticking it out and quitting, it happens all the time in lower levels too.

 

[MichaelFarrell]

thats fine, i just think that the independent hockey community is lacking in alot of talent right now. theres been alot of guys move into chl, ushl and nhl teams and quality guys knocking on the nhl door is not there.

if its a hobby and hes donig it for fun, thats fine as well, but i really am not sure if he has the actual ability to be a pro level scout based on his reports and views. i can have my own metrics, but it doesnt make them correct. if he wants to be one, there is a much longer road that would involve getting out to rinks and interacting, but some dont really like putting that type of work in.

maybe he disapeared because he thoguht this work would get him an nhl job? when it doesnt come i can see someone not sticking it out and quitting, it happens all the time in lower levels too.

Well, I think he is actually in the process of selling his data format and that’s why he took all of his content down. I don’t think he’s getting a job scouting currently.

I’m pretty sure he took everything down so abruptly mid-NHL season because he may of had an offer or wanted to field some offers for the data metrics he created.

 

[BondraTime]

this may not be a fair or accurate question, but i have to ask, was he actually good at scouting? did his lists prove to be actually good? its easy for anyone to make a list and post it, i can do that in 5 minutes, but it doesnt mean im actually good at it and that i have the hockey intelligence to do it?



i think redline is the closet to that now as far as every nhl team having copies. i certainly dont talk to alot of nhl guys but redline is the one that is mentioned the most.

Great at gathering analytics, not so great at scouting.

His info gathering is useful, interpreting that information not so much

 

[pgfan66]

Many publications I would agree, but ISS was a scouting/ranking agency that was subscribed to by every NHL team, to some extent, there needed be some correlation between their rankings and what happens on draft day, that was the goal, and they achieved that nearly every year. Consistently projecting 85-95% of the top 30 guys every year for decades.

Anze Kopitar also credited ISS for him being drafted so high.

i think redline is the closet to that now as far as every nhl team having copies. i certainly dont talk to alot of nhl guys but redline is the one that is mentioned the most.

100% of NHL teams use Rinknet as their scouting program. Rinknet is a HockeyTech product. HockeyTech’s scouting service was ISS, so they implemented their reports and rankings into Rinknet, which means every NHL team (and junior and other pro teams for that matter) had access through Rinknet. Now that ISS doesn’t exist anymore, Redline has taken their place as the service implemented in Rinknet.

So all of the above is correct, but not in the sense that NHL teams are actual paying customers of ISS or Redline. It just comes with the scouting program.

 

[WayneGretzky]

100% of NHL teams use Rinknet as their scouting program. Rinknet is a HockeyTech product. HockeyTech’s scouting service was ISS, so they implemented their reports and rankings into Rinknet, which means every NHL team (and junior and other pro teams for that matter) had access through Rinknet. Now that ISS doesn’t exist anymore, Redline has taken their place as the service implemented in Rinknet.

So all of the above is correct, but not in the sense that NHL teams are actual paying customers of ISS or Redline. It just comes with the scouting program.

I can also confirm that all 30 teams, as well as 60+ CHL organizations and many Euro clubs were also paying customers of ISS directly, long before ISS & Rinknet were bundled together and owned by HockeyTech.

 

[Frk It]

Back from the dead with a 2023 draft ranking....?

 

[Castle8130]

Good for him. Never thought he was the best scout, but I'm happy he is still doing something with draft prospects. He puts in a ridiculous amount of time and effort to come up with a detailed conclusion.