John Chayka

So viewings are helpful and certainly being live and feeling it and seeing stuff away from the puck brings a lot to the table.

But if you're also just trying to make sure that you're not missing anything and seeing players in different segments of the season or against different competition, supplementing some of those viewings can be really valuable.

Yeah, I mean, my approach and my view is, as you guys know, as well as I do or better, like, it's just really hard to win in the National Hockey League.

There's a ton of really smart people doing great work, lots of experience.

They've got a lot of knowledge.

And so you're always trying to find an edge, an advantage, something different, you know, not trying to play the exact same game as everybody else and just hope the ping pong balls hit every year for you.

you know, what can you do that's different that kind of gives you a right to win?

And, you know, look with my background and some of the things I've experiences I've had, you know, I feel like I've got a lot of experience in the data side.

And, you know, having said that, I think no matter what your background experience is,

you have to be cognizant of not over-indexing to something or under-indexing in another way.

So for me, it's just, I really believe in the power of the room, like I've said before.

I think, again, these are really hard decisions.

So if you get the best people around the table, put all the information on the table in terms of quantitative or qualitative evaluations,

your book on the players, you know, anything you've got on them in terms of intangibles.

And just, you know, it's hard, you know, you're trying to weight all these things in different ways and it's always different, you know, depending on the player and the situation and that the part of the draft that you're in, it'll evolve and it's never the same weighting.

But ultimately, you know, you have to be right when you make your pick.

And when you do that, you know, you want to have a lot of conviction that you've turned over every stone, you've looked at it from every different angle, and then you got to make a judgment call.

Yeah, I'd just say, like, you know, much like any fan, you'll turn on playoff hockey and, you know, it doesn't take you long to figure it out.

I mean, these are it's a it's it's a battle out there.

You got to be ready physically, mentally to go out and compete at that level.