Dennehy on Building the Draft Board | PODCAST

The 2022 NHL Draft is creeping closer and closer, set for July 7 and 8 in Montreal. And with that fast-approaching date, the Devils' scouting meetings are intensifying.
The time has come for the team to put together its final draft board. And with that, comes much disagreement and jockeying for player positioning.
"Bloody," is how Devils Chief Scout of Amateur Scouting Mark Dennehy described it with a laugh. "This is full contact scouting at this point."
During the scouting meetings, various area scouts and crossover scouts make their pitches for player positioning on the team's board. From there, Dennehy and general manager Tom Fitzgerald make the final decisions. And sometimes, scouts will really push certain players that they believe in. Then the democratic process begins.

"Guys have passion for their players. They all put together a list. Then it's up to you to defend that list," Dennehy told the Speak of the Devils podcast. "It's a little like a democratic republic in terms of our crossover guys get to vote. But at the end of the day, I'm the electoral college and 'Fitzy' is the president."
Scouting is an inexact science. The entire staff is well aware of that. But a scout's passion for a player could make the difference in their final ranking.
"Often times we are splitting hairs between one guy or another," Dennehy said. "This (scout) is pounding the table and he may be outvoted by one vote … we might flip that vote based on passion. If someone has a passion for someone, often times, they might know more about them than maybe we do. He might be from their region. We do an incredible job of sharing information, but at the end of the day putting things on the line when it really matters can be all the difference."
However, while the passion of a scout can influence the board, Dennehy needs to be aware of what is influencing that scout's thought process.
"One thing we have to recognize coming into this process is we all have bias," he said. "I have bias. Our crossover scouts have bias. We all have bias. I spent a lot of the year reading reports trying to figure out what each person's bias is."
Here are other topics discussed on the podcast…
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Mark Dennehy | Speak of the Devils