Former Red Wings GM Ken Holland spoke with The Athletic’s Eric Duhatschek regarding the concept of scouts earning Hockey Hall of Fame memberships, and he pointed to a particular case as an example of great drafting and great scouting:
Within the context of a sensational late-round pick that pans out, how do you determine organizationally who gets the credit for making the choice? According to Holland, even that can be tricky because scouting is, above all, a collaborative exercise.
Holland cited the Red Wings as an example of how the process unfolds. Jim Nill was Holland’s assistant GM and he oversaw the draft until leaving to join the Dallas Stars as their GM in 2013 while Hakan Andersson is the team’s long-time European scout, responsible for selecting, among others, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, in the late rounds.
“So Hakan Andersson has a list of names and he’s sitting over Jim Nill’s left shoulder, and he’s saying, ‘I like this Pavel Datsyuk kid. I like him a lot.’ So, Jimmy Nill looks over his list and he doesn’t have anybody else and Hakan is pushing, pushing, pushing and so the Red Wings draft Pavel Datsyuk. And Pavel Datsyuk goes on to be one of the best players in Red Wing history.
“Now is that Jim Nill? Or is that Hakan Andersson? Well, it’s actually both. Jim Nill could have made the decision to draft a kid from Western Canada and not draft Pavel Datsyuk. But to Jim’s credit, as the chief decision-maker, he trusted Hakan Andersson’s judgment and Hakan delivered. Now is Hakan getting credit for that pick? Or Jim Nill? It’s in the eye of the beholder, right?”
Continued; Hakan Andersson should be a Hockey Hall of Famer for certain.
If that’s the *actual* situation around the drafting of Pavel Datsyuk then Andersson deserves 100% of the credit.
If Andersson had to keep “pushing, pushing, pushing” despite the fact that Nill “doesn’t have anybody else” left on his draft list, then it sounds like Nill didn’t believe in Datsyuk at all and did it just to get Andersson to shut up.