Scout’s Honor 2017
By Lowetide
6 years agoThe Oilers hiring of Vaclav Burda as their director of European scouting gives us a chance to update the scouting staff for the organization. Since Peter Chiarelli arrived in 2015, things have been moving along swiftly on the amateur side and tonight is a good time to revisit this important area.
You may recall that Stu MacGregor, Brad Davis and Kent Hawley moved along in 2015, with Bob Green (who was already inside the organization) and (later) Keith Gretkzy moving in. There has been more tweaking over the last two years (Michael, Chiarelli, Alexander Naurov) and today’s news makes for more shuffling.
SUMMER 2016 AMATEUR SCOUTS
- Bob Brown: WHL and BCJHL (Tyler Benson from 2016 draft)
- Michael Chiarelli: OHL (Markus Niemelainen, Dylan Wells, possibly Matthew Cairns)
- Jim Crosson: WHL (Tyler Benson)
- Joseph Cucci: New England (Graham McPhee, Vincent Desharnais)
- Bill Dandy: QMJHL (None from the Q this year)
- Pelle Eklund: Europe (Jesse Puljujarvi, Filip Berglund, Aapeli Rasanen)
- PJ Fenton: New hire, recently retired. Played in Europe last few seasons
- Scott Harlow: NCAA and American junior leagues (Graham McPhee, Vincent Desharnais)
- Dave Heitz: Goalies (Dylan Wells)
- Frankie Jay: New hire, legendary fellow. Scouted for Sens/Habs in strong eras for both
- James McGregor: (OHL) (Markus Niemelainen, Dylan Wells, possibly Matthew Cairns)
- Frank Musil: Europe (Jesse Puljujarvi, Filip Berglund, Aapeli Rasanen)
- Alexander Naurov: Europe (Jesse Puljujarvi, Filip Berglund, Aapeli Rasanen)
- Source
That’s from a post of mine from last August, seems a reasonable estimate of what the scouting department looked like at the time. Keith Gretzky is responsible for the scouting group (as I understand it), reporting to Peter Chiarelli, and Bob Green is the scouting director overseeing the group and reporting to Gretzky.
SUMMER 2017 AMATEUR SCOUTS
- Bob Brown: WHL and BCJHL (Kailer Yamamoto, Stuart Skinner from 2017 draft)
- Michael Chiarelli: OHL (Dmitri Samorukov, Kirill Maksimov from 2017 draft)
- Jim Crosson: WHL (Kailer Yamamoto, Stuart Skinner from 2017 draft)
- Joseph Cucci: New England (Possibly Skyler Brind’Amour, Phil Kemp from 2017 draft)
- Bill Dandy: QMJHL (None from the Q this year)
- Pelle Eklund: Europe (No Europeans this year)
- PJ Fenton: Europe (No Europeans this year)
- Scott Harlow: NCAA and American junior leagues (Skyler Brind’Amour, Phil Kemp from 2017 draft)
- Dave Heitz: Goalies (Stuart Skinner from 2017 draft)
- Frankie Jay: Don’t know his scouting area, could see all of these prospects.
- James McGregor: (OHL) (Dmitri Samorukov, Kirill Maksimov from 2017 draft)
- Frank Musil: Europe (No Europeans this year)
- Alexander Naurov: Europe (No Europeans this year)
The hiring of Vaclav Burda is interesting, he (along with Jay) represents some veteran scouting talent coming over from Ottawa. Peter Chiarelli was a member of the Ottawa Senators front office staff late ’90s/early 2000s, that is probably the connection. Zach Laing has more on the signing of Burda here.
Recent articles from Lowetide
