Will Scouch: A very different looking draft list...and he makes some good points!
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Who is Will Scouch and why does he have a counterintuitive draft ranking?
Lots of different opinions out there. We're bringing you a different opinion today, folks. People looking to get some counterintuitive notions about who's going where. This is your man right here. Will Scouch joins us now. Hello. You're our wacky draft insider here, Will, just because you have very unique opinions on everything that's about to happen. He's the founder of Scouching, CTO of Fractal Hockey, and you can find him at scouching.ca. Welcome aboard here, Will. It's been a long time coming.
Thanks. Hey, I'm glad to be here. It was great seeing that DM come in. I'm feeling good. It's Christmas Eve, so I can't be too down today.
It feels like if you're going to have some, I don't know if they're outlandish takes, but this feels like the draft. There is so much volatility, and it just kind of feels like this is going to be an off-the-board sort of draft.
It's entirely possible. I mean, I think a lot of people have accurately summarized that this is a pretty even, wide-open class, and the things that are really interesting, the storylines, are definitely more intriguing than most. I mean, this is a year where there's a lot of defensemen, and they all kind of bring somewhat different things, so you kind of see what people like in a player, and maybe some of the things they really value, and now you get to see teams and what they kind of think, and so... It's been a really interesting year to watch, and I'm really fascinated to see how it goes. It's going to be a very interesting last 48 hours here. We're going to bring your rankings up in a second.
Have you done any mocks yet? Because just because of all these drafts that have changed hands, like I wonder how much that's changed your mind a little bit about who might go where.
I'm not going to lie. This is a benefit of working for yourself. I did a mock draft and I updated it after the Ottawa stuff on the weekend. And then once the Buffalo stuff started happening the other day, I just kind of went, you know what? I'm done. No, we're done. We're just leaving it. It's the way it's going to be and I'm leaving it. I'm not going to try to keep up because the NHL seems to be going in a completely different direction all the time.
And that's fun too. And that's fun too that we've got that little wrinkle that we don't normally have of top five, top 10 picks being traded. Let's get to it and we'll put your rankings up and then we'll run and duck for cover here as people react to them. Um, and the first two, pretty much according to Hoyle for most people, Gavin McKenna at one, Ivar Stenberg at two. And again, folks, this is a ranking, not a mock draft. Um, but you've got some old names. This is not, you know, from two years ago with Tyne and Lawrence ranked at number three, but you have stuck to your guns despite his, uh, uneven season moving to college hockey. Absolutely.
Yeah.
So for starters, the way I do my work is a little bit different than most people. I kind of focus a lot more on performance data collection. So I collect a lot of my own data from performances and video and all that stuff. And I basically compile my own databases on what guys bring to the game and what they're doing on the ice. And it's not necessarily like a one-to-one, like this isn't ordered best to worst. It's just an added sort of level of context that I think most people don't really have access to. you end up with some weird stuff that pops out where you kind of, you know, it helps you zoom out and you sort of see the bigger picture. And I guess if you want to start with Lawrence, I mean, I think with him, I think it's a very interesting year.
And we were talking about that a little earlier, but it's interesting too, because there's this big paradigm shift going on where a bunch of players are jumping to the NCAA really early. I think, I think there's five 17 year olds in the NCAA this year. And it's, ever. I think in this millennium, there's only been 26 or 27, something like that. So there's been this massive influx of 17 year olds into the NCAA and CHL players are going in.
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