Devils draft table

“He’s strong, he’s heavy, works down low, physical. I like the way he plays. But he is what he is, a bottom-6 guy.”

“I wouldn’t say he fell off a cliff. But his play really dipped in the second half. So, who is the real player?”

“What’s his ceiling? Third round? Fourth round? How high would you take him?”

These phrases were thrown around early afternoon Tuesday inside a meeting room at the Prudential Center. Gathered around a U-shaped table were members of the Devils hockey operations department and amateur scouting staff.

Their mission? To go through every draft eligible player for the upcoming 2025 NHL Draft in late June and start to compile their ultimate list, a final ranking of every player from best to worst.

Tuesday marked the first day of meetings that will happen continuously over the next few weeks while the team evaluates every potential prospect. The Devils are putting in the arduous and tedious work now, so that come draft time, the club can rely on their list knowing that they put in the work making it as accurate and aligned as possible.

“The biggest issue with him is consistent compete. He gets lost in the mix. He’s not an energetic player. He finished more checks, but I don’t think it’s natural. I think someone told him to do it.”

“I still worry about his heaviness. He’s a risky pick.”

“He’s one of their leading scorers but hasn’t faced any real adversity.”

The Devils regional scouts have put in an entire year’s worth of work while putting together their book on every single prospect. They watched numerous games, talked to the prospect, coaches, trainers – and even Zamboni drivers in some cases – to do their due diligence on every prospect.

The cross-over scouts have also done their work, reading the regional scouts’ reports and getting their own eyes on prospects that have jumped out to them. All parties have built out incredibly detailed information of the current draft pool.

Now comes the process of putting players into proper placement and doing the nitty gritty work of building the list.

Mark Dennehy, the Devis’ Chief Scout, opened the meeting with one directive to his team.

“Just get the list right.”

And with that, the floor was opened for discussion and debate on prospects from all over the world over the course of several hours.

“He plays the right way. He’s connected between the D and forwards. He doesn’t cheat the game.”

“He works hard in the gym, works hard in practice. But it’s not his natural inclination to finish checks. The coaches are pushing him hard to do that.”

“Every game I saw him; he was the best player on the ice.”

At times, the scouts were on the same page with prospects. At other times, differing opinions were offered. There was an open dialogue in the room and the entire staff was involved in the process.

“We do want people to share their opinions, then we’ll have some fervent debate about those opinions, there will be a vote and then we try to put the list together based on that,” Dennehy said. “Our list is going to take a huge step over the next couple of days, but it’s far from being done until draft day. You’ll make changes leading up to that, some based on the combines, some based on World Championships.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done, but I like the steps we’ve taken.”

One of the beginning steps to building the list is finding out where players should fall in terms of round. That can be a hard task for the regional scouts and even some cross-over scouts, because they aren’t seeing every single prospect. So, the Devils start with a simple philosophy.

“We ask (regional scouts) to put them into a category. It’s more about where would you be excited about drafting them?” Dennehy said. “We don’t control where they’ll be available. But where would you be excited about drafting this player.

“At the end of the season, we will then put them into a grid that suggests where they’ll be.”

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      Get a peek behind the curtain of the Devils' amateur scout meetings ahead of the NHL Draft

      “I have X going in the second and Y going in the third.”

      “Who do you think has more upside?”

      “How passionate are you?”

      Once the scouts start digging into the finite details on each prospect, sometimes it can be hard to separate certain players out. But every scout has a player or two (or more) that they truly believe in. Dennehy calls them “passion players.” And in those circumstances, he lets those scouts plead their case, and sometimes against each other.

      “It’s one of the better parts of the job. You want to have passion for anything that you do,” Dennehy said. “If they’re not passionate about a guy, there’s really no reason for us to take him. We like that debate.

      “What helps is it’s very respectful. It doesn’t get heated in the sense that it’s not personal. It’s not knockdown, drag out, but there’s a lot of passion.”

      Scouting may be one of the most difficult tasks in all of sports. You have to look at 17- and 18-year-old boys and project out how they’ll mature, grow and perform at the highest level of play as men. Every player is unique in their own way, and judged accordingly.

      In many instances, all of the players drafted have a certain level of skill that has allowed them to excel at various levels of hockey. After all, drafted prospects are the elite of the elite among their class. But while many of them may possess their own unique skills, perhaps what really separates them is what’s between their ears and in their heart.

      “Most of these kids have never been a healthy scratch. They’ve played on varsity. They’ve played junior hockey. They’ve had success their whole life,” Dennehy said. “They’re going to come to the pro level and face adversity.

      “Players that survive have some of those other traits: size, strength, skill, speed, shot. But what really differentiates them is the ability to overcome adversity and dig in and refuse to be denied. That’s hard.”

      Beyond the physical traits, the psychological makeup of a player may be the most important of all, and the hardest to determine. That’s why the bulk of the burden falls on the regional scouts, those closest to the player and adjacent parties.

      “That’s why our regional scouts are so important,” Dennehy said, “they need to know the coaches. They’ll talk to Zamboni drivers. They’ll talk to trainers. Whoever they can talk to to better understand these players. The more you know about them, the better chance you have at making the right choice.”

      Dennedy interview

      “He’s got NHL traits.”

      “He’s come a long way from the start of the year. I think he’s improved his work ethic.”

      The Devils’ scouting department doesn’t just rely on one metric for its analysis. There are several contributing factors from the eye test to interviews to even modern technology.

      “I give our analytics and IT department huge kudos. When I say a robust system, there’s nothing that our software can’t do,” Dennehy said. “If we think of something we’d like it to do that we haven’t thought of yet, we’re one phone call away and we’ll get a beta version of it pretty quickly.”

      That software comes with the club’s own analytic programs and readings. And with the use of analytics, the Devils are able to widen their scope on scouting as well as making sure no prospects get lost.

      “Analytics has done a great job for us in two areas,” Dennehy said. “One, coverage in general. Once we’ve identified maybe our top 50 players, are we getting enough eyes on them? It helps us focus.

      “Another area is identifying some guys that are off the beaten path. They’ll bring a couple guys to our attention throughout the year saying there’s a player in this league that the data is telling us could project to be an NHL draft pick. We take that information, we get it in front of our scouts, we get out there and get some eyes on him.”

      That has proved valuable. In each draft headed by Dennehy, analytics has found some diamonds in the rough.

      “In the three drafts that I’ve been a part of, we’ve taken at least one player that we hadn’t even talked about at Christmas,” he said. “It’s identifying players early but also catching emerging players. We have to make sure none of these players slip through the cracks.”

      2025 nhl draft saliyev

      Another unique situation will present itself at the upcoming 2025 NHL Draft. It will be held remotely. The prospects and select hockey operations staff will be present in Los Angeles, but every NHL team will be based in their home city.

      A similar situation took place during the COVID-19 draft with teams handling the draft from the remote location of their respective home cities. That means that instead of having a select few members of the scouting staff sitting at the draft table communicating with the remaining group, which typically sets up in an arena suite, the entire scouting staff can be in one room and speaking freely.

      “We had a dress rehearsal with Covid with the remote draft,” Dennehy said. “I like the idea of having all of our people in one room, not necessarily having to dance around conversations or questions. We’ll speak candidly about different situations. Hopefully, that’ll give us the upper hand in making the right decisions.”

      There is a still a long way until the draft. And a lot of work remains to be done. The current meetings are part of that process. However, the dirty work has been completed by all the scouts from the previous season. The scouts have spent months on the road away from their families, living in hotels, sometimes traveling through treacherous situations to see a game or player. And they do it all for love of the game.

      “These guys don’t do this to get rich. They do this because they have a passion for hockey, they’ve been in hockey their whole lives,” Dennehy said. “There are a lot of sacrifices they make. They’re on the road from September to April four days a week. That’s not just a commitment that they’re making, it’s a commitment that their wives are making. It’s all encompassing.”

      Scouts, in many ways, are the backbone of any organization. At the end of the day, they have the same goal as everyone else.

      “Our guys want to win a Stanley Cup,” Dennehy said. “We want to help this organization achieve its goals. This is the way we do it. We’re the first point of entry for player personnel. We’re identifying guys that are 18 years old that we think can help us down the road win a Stanley Cup.”

      Devils draft room