Daren Hermiston was an agent on a rapid rise in the industry over the past few years. The 39-year-old British Columbian from Kamloops had to find his edge in the ultra-competitive world of hockey player representation, and he did that by being a student of development and wanting to find new ways to help get his clients to the NHL.
When he got into the business, Hermiston was looking for an advantage over the competition. He was working in the Western Canada region and wanted to study development. He was exploring how sport science, analytics, and nutrition could help his clients develop rapidly and saw how a commitment to more than just the on-ice part of the game supported his players’ growth in their teens and early twenties.
“I started to really study modern ways that the game was changing, and in the early days, analytics weren’t around yet. There was no tech movement or AI movement. I spent a lot of time talking to sports scientists and started to learn. I was looking for an edge, because I knew other guys had competitive advantages over me, specific to their experience, and so I was looking for a different edge,” said Hermiston
“It began with sports science, it grew into nutrition, it grew into analytics. It’s now recently grown into looking at different technologies and different software in different ways, just to make your processes more efficient.”
When Hermiston was first considered for the role of Director of Players Personnel and Player Development with the Canucks, he met with Ryan Johnson and the Sedins. Hermiston compared his time as an agent to Johnson’s career in the NHL.
“I said, listen, my story as an agent is I’m a grinder, I figure out a way to get there and stay there, and that’s what I think my story is, and that’s what I think it’s going to continue to be,” he said.
“What I said to them is that I’m going to continue to grind to find competitive advantages within the industry and exploit those to make our organization the best.”
Now, the grinder has a full team of development staff alongside him and is excited about the opportunity to take on such an important role with the Canucks, as they place a heavy focus on development and will look to add many young players during their current rebuild.
He hasn’t been on the job for two weeks yet, but has already put a heavy focus on working with the sports psychology and analytics department.
“I want to continue to be a grinder, continue to work, continue to find competitive advantages, but now I feel like I have a significant amount of resources around me that I can use to make a difference in each player’s career, and ultimately the goal is use each aspect in each different department and collaborate with them to help each one of our prospects reach their ceiling, whatever that ceiling may be,” said Hermiston.
Hermiston brings an interesting perspective after seeing how many different NHL organizations worked to develop his clients. He has seen what has worked and what has failed, and he now brings that knowledge to his role with the Canucks.
Johnson and the Sedins have made it clear to him that they want to hear innovative ideas for how to manage development in the organization. He has been tasked with challenging the standard thought process in development, which is why Hermiston is working so closely with Aiden Fox in the Analytics Department and Alex Trinca in the Human Performance Department.
“We are going to ask Aiden [Fox] to provide a comprehensive breakdown of each draft pick’s analytic profile, and then we, as a development staff, are going to start watching them right from development camp into their next season, and we’re going to build our own report base of what we think the player is doing,” he said.
“In addition to analytics, we will get a baseline from sports science, sports psychology, and nutrition. All these departments are going to come together, and we will form a holistic view on what these players need to do to reach their ceilings.”
Hermiston will be travelling around the world to visit prospects and is also excited to have Mikael Samuelsson and Mike Komisarek as part of his team.
Samuelsson and Komisarek bring over 1,250 games of NHL experience, and Hermiston is elated to join that crew and work on a plan with the development coaches where they can use their biggest strength and give valuable, firsthand advice from their own experiences in the NHL.
“It’s so much fun to see these young players, regardless of where they are in their junior cities, in their NCAA cities or Europe. I’m a big proponent of building relationships, like real relationships, and I’m really excited just to go out and get to know them first and foremost,” he said.
Creating connectivity throughout the organization is something that Hermiston is already establishing in the Canucks development department. He sees that beginning immediately after the draft. It’s important to him to get the scouts, development coaches, and Abbotsford Canucks staff all on the same page after a player has been added to the pipeline.
“Continuity and the unity between every division within the organization is what can be a really differentiating factor for every prospect and hopefully getting to their ceiling in the NHL,” he added.
“We don’t want the amateur staff to put together all these reports and then hand them off to player development with no conversation. It’s our job to find the most efficient ways to communicate internally, so that there’s no information loss from department to department.”
Moreover, Hermiston believes that a good culture will reign above all as the key factor in helping their prospects succeed in the NHL. He called the culture development within the Canucks organization the most intriguing factor that helped him make the jump from the agent world into hockey operations for a team.
Though he believes the word ‘culture’ is overused in and outside of sports, he believes in what Johnson and the Sedins are trying to establish with the Canucks.
“I was really excited to work with RJ, because I feel like I have a really good understanding of him as a person, and he doesn’t have to say to me, we’re going to have a good culture, because for me, culture starts with how your leaders just live their life. I know how RJ lives his life and how he treats people because I’ve seen it. It’s just ingrained in who he is,” said Hermiston.
“Culture resonates through every portion of the organization, and that’s what gives us a chance to be successful. Once you have all of that in place, that’s what affords the whole group the opportunity to use these various exciting tools, whether it’s analytics, new modern opportunities in sports science, or sports psychology. When we have a great culture, we can then utilize all these different exciting opportunities to give resources to the players.”
Hermiston is prepared to think creatively and be a pioneer with how the Canucks approach development. Taking inspiration from the way the Canucks operated during their playoff runs from 2009 to 2013, he saw what a strong culture can do in terms of giving new ideas and progressive thinking a chance.
He has enjoyed the preliminary stages of working alongside the Sedins and Johnson, and likes how all three have been challenging him in the way they approach the development process.
On top of all the relationships, Hermiston feels that this opportunity, with this organization, at this point in their competitive cycle, is just a perfect fit for him. He grew up a Canucks fan and has spent much of his time as an agent working in Western Canada.
“I’ve watched this team since I was a child with my brothers, mother, and father. We all grew up as Canucks fans. It’s been 15 years of work and doing a lot of good things on the agency side. Still, the opportunity came with my childhood team with Presidents that I idolized as a kid and a General Manager who I’ve come to have just a huge amount of respect and affection for,” he said.
“It means a lot to be here. I’m kind of excited to stop talking about it, to be honest. I just want to get to the grind and do some good work. I want to help this organization take great steps towards sustained success every year.”
With development at the forefront of the Canucks rebuild, Hermiston has plenty on his plate and is ready to build a process that creates sustained success for the organization and the prospects he will be working closely with.
By marrying his ‘grinder’ mentality with a cutting-edge holistic approach and integrating analytics, sports science, and deep internal communication, he is poised to reshape how this organization nurtures its future talent.
