Oilers director of Amateur Scouting Rick Pracey (7/2/25)

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Oilers NOW with Bob Stauffer 20 min 4 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 23 days ago

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What early memories of wrestling does Rick Pracey share and how do they relate to his scouting career?

Bob Stauffer 0:00

Hey, it's Bob Stoffer. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Oilers Now ad free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. All right, I just want to read you a quick text here and then I'm gonna get to Rick Precy. And I appreciate everybody who uh chimed in with their first uh wrestling heroes or idols. I might even ask Rick if he had one because I think at one point or another every young guy out there has a two or three year window or in Kellen Kennedy's case a thirty year window uh where they are a wrestling fan. Uh but this text says, Bob, I actually believe the Oilers are better now than they were when they finished the Stanley Cup. They got red of players that needed to be in certain positions and replace them with better players.

Bob Stauffer 0:44

I would have actually traded for Andrew Maggie Pani and uh given away every uh single player that Stan's gotten rid of. In a package. Uh now, uh they gotta go work their magic. The league is gonna get better, uh, faster and younger, and the Oilers need to too. Well one of those guys that's gonna help in that regard is uh uh Matthew Savoy, who the Oilers picked up in a trade from Buffalo. He'll be probably part of the team. There's Sam O'Reilly as well. And we're gonna head off to the River Creek Resort and Casino Hot Plan, and for the second time in a week. Welcome back. Uh little known In fact a uh great scout but also a big wrestling fan. The one the only Rick Pracy is that Rick, did you ever have a period in which you had a a big wrestling uh superhero back in the day?

Rick Pracey 1:31

Uh Maybe the macho man The Macho man? The head to choose sure.

Bob Stauffer 1:38

Well, Jack Michaels was a big fan of the Macho Man, you know? He had the whole Miss Elizabeth thing going on there for all you know uh he's a former baseball player, eh? The macho man? Like a lot of the guys were former former football players. Yeah, he was like in the Cardinals organization for a while. Great athlete back in the day. All right. Uh I just wanted to loosen you up. How was that flight last night? Uh you caught the red eye back to Eventon after a busy day in free agency. How was that?

Rick Pracey 2:05

It was uh I was struggling this afternoon but uh all good. Need to get back. Uh just gonna be a quick turnaround here. We've got uh eighteen camps, the under twenty camps and the Holinka camps.

How does the Oilers’ amateur scouting department evaluate and prioritize draft targets?

Rick Pracey 2:17

So uh we'll we'll get rolling here it's like near the end of July.

Bob Stauffer 2:20

You think you got any shot at Gavin McKenna or Keaton Verhoff?

Rick Pracey 2:43

Uh challenging, but it We approach it a different way. Well I don't know a different way. I don't know what all the other teams do, but We go Sort of through a process where we find the fit That we're looking for. And then we do a tremendous amount of work on guys that aren't fit. And then we just work the numbers so At eighty three, our goal was to hit somebody Sort of thirty four to forty four on our list. That was really ambitious. Uh but we had five players in particular, we thought. Or more realistic, uh you know, sort of in that thirty nine to forty four range? And uh we orchestrated the list that way. So It do we just know that there's, you know Players that we have after our targets are certainly gonna go before the guys we're interested in, and then you just work the math.

Bob Stauffer 3:37

We're joined by Rick Bracey's the Oiler's head amateur scout. So I I I'm not saying can you give away the Cadbury secret, but I'm asking you to give away the Cadbury secret. Last year you traded in the first round to get Sam O'Reilly, and we will talk about him a little bit later on. At any point Uh, did you know did the orders consider maybe trying to flip a uh a a first rounder in twenty twenty seven to get into the tw uh this draft this year.

Rick Pracey 4:08

Yes. Uh we had some conversations with uh two teams in particular. Um And then it was sort of waiting through the process. We had two prospects in particular we thought uh sort of might slide to that later first round. Yep. And then you know, it kept us active, it kept us engaged, uh there were fun conversations and you know, they dissolved uh And then, you know, we could have maybe tried to do something early in the second yet.