Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] For P97 welcome to the Hockey Industry Assignment Outline. I'm extremely excited to get to share the details of this assignment with you. I've made quite a few changes to this assignment over the past few years as we've sort of moved in and out of various projects. But. But I'm extremely excited about what we've been able to put together for this semester. And there are some limitations, obviously with there being an online course, but I wanted to design assignments that give you practical experience in many different aspects of the hockey industry, and this assignment is is one of them.
[00:00:43] So here we have four separate choices for you. Now, again, as we set off on this journey, I will remind you you only have to choose one these aspects of the assignment. You don't have to do all four, but there are one for it's called agency, one and that is called scouting, one that is called analytics, and one that is called event planning. Those are the four areas of not just the hockey industry, but the sport industry in general that you can choose from. And we've put together four types of assignments, each of which has a practical output that you're going to hopefully be able to use as you navigate the hockey industry or the sport industry as a whole. Now, it's important to note that you don't need any expertise in any one of these areas at all prior to doing this assignment. You don't need to have known anything about analytics. If you'd like to give analytics a try. You don't need to know anything about a hockey agency or sports agency to do the agency section or scouting to do scouting. In fact, this is an opportunity to maybe try something that you have never considered as a possible career path for you. If you've done this before, fantastic. If you're drawn towards some of the areas that you're already. You're already used to, or you've already even worked in, that's fantastic too. But at this stage, I'd like you to go to the BrightSpace course section if you can, if they're on your phone or on your laptop. If you haven't looked over the hockey Industry assignment tab, please do so now. You can even pause it here and then rejoin us when you've had a look around, just to sort of explore. But I'm going to go through each of the aspects, each of each of the choices, one by one and explain what I'm looking for and each one of them. And the first one we're going to start with is the scouting group. So again, head to Brightspace make sure you've had a look there. But if not, let's get started by describing the scouting group's choice. Have a look at where it says HIA Scouting outline there. That sort of goes over the the assignments outline.
[00:02:30] And here this is designed in conjunction with TAs that we've had and and experience with it with the actual hockey agencies themselves.
[00:02:38] Here is the sort of synopsis of the assignment. Imagine you are working for a professional hockey team that is building a list of potential candidates to be drafted.
[00:02:46] If your report is too generous or too harsh, there may be an unrealistic view of that player within the organization which could lead to poor decision making. The purpose of this assignment is for students to develop their scouting expertise by creating scouting deliverables that align with industry expectations and can serve as a valuable template for future hockey applications.
[00:03:05] This assignment consists of watching a chosen hockey player, creating a written scouting report and and offering analysis on strengths and weaknesses. So here, crucially for the scouting assignment, you are going to be doing an actual scouting assignment. You are going to be scouting real players.
[00:03:22] Crucially here, and if you've done this in the past or if you're currently volunteering as a, as a scout for a junior team or A, whether it's junior, B, junior, C, major, junior, you name it. You know, we're not really interested in scouting reports necessarily of National Hockey League players. That's not really the point. You have to get experience doing this scouting in minor hockey, and that's a large part of the job, as many of you can probably imagine. So to do this, what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to select a player from the list available here. Now, we've composed a list of possible players to choose from. If you click on the hot link there, it'll take you to a Google Drive, a Google Sheets folder, I should say. It's a whole list of players and when you click on that list, it's a whole bunch of players and tells you what province they are from. But that's about all the information that we wanted to share with you on the front end because it is sort of up to you now to identify from this list of players where they're playing and how they're sort of navigating their junior hockey careers. These are current players. These are real players that are playing in the minor hockey model right now. You'd be able to search them up on Elite Prospects or HockeyDB. You give them a quick Google search. When you find a name, you like, it always helps if you've got a name on there and search the name. And then hockey, if you want to find them, find where they're playing. That's the sort of the next thing you're going to have to do. Figure out what team they play for. Because the next step going to be to have to watch them. And this is some advice. Next year, download Epic Pen or other drawing software if you want to supplement your assignment with video and screenshot analysis. Exemplary submissions will include visual aids accompanying your analysis, such as screenshots, video screen recordings, etc. So if you're going to do this scouting assignment and you want to actually scout these players, yes, providing a written report is important, but we would like to see exactly what you're talking about. If you have a player and you want to demonstrate their hockey iq, their awareness or things like that, download this software called Epic Pen.
[00:05:13] And if you have any questions about that, feel free to email myself and I can forward you also to, to one of your TAs that can help you. Especially we have, we're really lucky to have TAs in this assignment that are really well versed in this type of technology and they can show you how to do that.
[00:05:27] But we do want to have some sort of visual aid. That's an important part of scouting. Being able to demonstrate what it is that you're thinking. Not just based on, on just writing alone, but also being able to say here, here's exactly what I'm talking about. And it doesn't need to be Epic Pen. It can be any sort of software that allows you to draw on the screen while you're showing screenshots. But watch two or more games of your chosen player using a site called Flow Hockey tv.
[00:05:52] So Flow Hockey allows you to access lots of junior hockey teams throughout Canada. In fact, once you've identified your player, you likely will be able to find their team. And undoubtedly you'll be able to find that team on Flow Hockey. Now, order to log on to Flow Hockey, there's the Flow Hockey TV link provided in the brightspace there as well as the login info that you can use to log in there. Now again, we are sharing this login for this, for this course, you're able to watch all sorts of junior leagues. I really must encourage you not to use this to watch American League games or ECHL games right now because that will clog up the sort of traffic. Just use it right now to watch your, to watch your specific player. That would be the, I think the best way to Go about this right now. So you need to create a scouting report for your player. Here are the components of what we're looking for in a scouting report. List of what games you watched with the opponent details. A grading system that evaluates key player traits I.e. speed, size, stick handling, release, stride, awareness. These are just examples. You can make up your own though, and it's important here at this stage in terms of the grading system. This is where I'm looking for you to be creative to do this yourself.
[00:06:58] Any sort of light biographic detail, some background info you can find. I'm not looking for obviously a novel about their lives, some counting stats, AKA some base statistics from elite prospects, advanced statistics if those are available, but that's unlikely and a ceiling floor description of player potential.
[00:07:15] You must answer the following prompts throughout your assignment.
[00:07:19] Explain your player's best asset from a hockey perspective. Explain your player's most noticeable weakness between game one and other games. Identify and describe two differences in the player's performance.
[00:07:30] Provide screenshots video using Epic pen to support your case. Do you think this player has a future in professional hockey in any capacity? Explain. Keep in mind that many hockey players are professional making money to play hockey, whether it be Tier 1, NHL, Tier 2, AHL, Tier 3, EHL, or another continent, etc. And keep in mind that first sentence there we're not looking for you to tear a player to smithereens. That is certainly not not the way to to enter the scouting industry. That is not. If you have an ambition here, you won't get very far selecting a player and then saying this player is terrible and awful and stupid and dumb. And that is really, really what we're not looking for. Especially if you've been in scouting rooms. There's harsh critiques, absolutely. But the idea is not to sort of tear down minor hockey players. That's not the point here.
[00:08:14] So select a player, watch the games, prepare the scouting report and submit it. And the nice thing is also on this assignment here, if you have a look at scouting Webinars, there are three videos here posted on BrightSpace that show you how to do scouting how to do this. So if you have any questions, I don't really know how to do this, or I'm not sure what you mean by identify strengths and weaknesses. Have a watch of these videos. They're there provided to help you throughout this process. So this sounds something interesting to you and you've never done it before. Fantastic. This is all you need to get started on this type of process project.
[00:08:46] So that's the scouting group that's one of your choices. The second one I'm going to talk about is the event planning group here. Now this one took a little while to put together here and has to do specifically with the Niagara Ice Dogs. We're fortunate to have a small relationship with the Niagara Ice Dogs in this class, but a larger one throw with Brock University. We have many alumni that have joined them, including Michelle Eastman and this assignment. Your goal is to create an event proposal for the Niagara Ice Dogs that will further connect them to the Niagara region, strengthening existing and fostering new fan relationships. And, and I've given you an outline of what we're looking for here with a purpose, goals and objectives, target audiences, event stakeholders, event schedule, event marketing and promotion, value proposition, KPIs and cost estimation, everything that goes into hosting a successful event. So what we're looking for here is event that could actually feasibly be pulled off in the Niagara region. We're fortunate to have this type of relationship over the last few years. And the best submissions each year I actually bring up to Michelle and, and go over them with them, with the student who created them.
[00:09:47] So the idea here is come up with an event, cost it out, give me the purpose, give me the goals and objectives, what's the target audience, all those types of things. And it certainly also describe what some key performance indicators are going to be.
[00:10:02] This one right here, there's a real practical use for, for this assignment here. Yes, the best ones I am going to submit to the Ice Dogs directly. But also this is something that's far beyond simply just the hockey industry.
[00:10:15] If this is your expertise or the area of expertise you want to get into in sports, this is an assignment that maybe is similar to one you've done in other classes or for another sports, but this time you can directly apply to the Niagara Ice Dogs. We are looking for something specifically tailored to the Niagara Ice Dogs. We don't need just a generic event planned that could be applied to any team.
[00:10:34] Here's another note here. And again, I don't know if this is really as big of a concern with the scouting one, but I really can't just have you going to ChatGPT and just asking it to fill out the sheet for you. It just doesn't work. I mean, it's just not going to happen. I need to test your ability to actually sit there and think of an event and think through its execution. Can ChatGPT just come up with sort of an idea for you in terms of how to fill this out and what the KPIs could be, I suppose. Right. But that's not really a great indication of who you are and what your expertise is and what you could bring to an organization like the Niagara Ice Docs. So even if it's imperfect, that's okay. But I need to know it's a human being thinking of these ideas because that's who I want to hire ultimately. Okay, so I am insisting that you do not simply put this into ChatGPT and say answer and come up with the, the event outline here. It was so unbelievably noticeable. We've ran it through both Gemini GPT and a few others to see what it looks like when you turn it out. And it definitely does produce an event for you. It's just, it doesn't make any sense in terms of the inaugural region specifically. So the more specific, the more realistic, the more Niagara specific your event can be, the better here. Okay, so go through each of those components of the assignment. Make sure that you're thinking these things through. The more specific, the more, the more relevant you can make your information, the better. In terms of length for this assignment here, this one right here, where I'm not looking for, for any specific length necessarily, but I need to know that you've thought of each of these, these, these aspects. So the length of it is as long as it needs to be. So again, this is just a general question or general note for, for this entire assignment, if you ask me a question over email that's covered in this audio lecture, I'm not going to be able to respond to it because I get so many questions along this, this regard. So if you're asking how long it needs to be, your answer is as long as it needs to be for this particular assignment. Okay, so for some of these might be, might have just two sentences when it comes to the, say, value proposition section as an example, some might need to be three or four paragraphs. That's really up to you and your event. There is no real length requirement here for this assignment because it's as long as it needs to be. The more detailed, the better.
[00:12:40] So that's the Ice Dogs event planning one. Pretty straightforward here. I think you're probably most familiar with that one as a. As if from the outset, given your experiences here at Brock, we are going to move to the Hockey Agency Group. So we head to the Hockey Agency Group tab on brightspace, have a look at the HIA Agency outline. That's what I'm reading over right now. The Purpose of this assignment is to serve as a representative for a hockey player who has the goal of professional hockey. Pitching your player to a mock agency, which I have creatively titled McKee Sports Limited and creating a professional style report with supplementary media materials to support your client's case.
[00:13:14] This assignment serves as a practice version of a real world sport management scenario. A young hockey player may have an advisor or a helpful parent, but they need an agency to help them reach the next level.
[00:13:26] You are tasked with securing that representation. This assignment consists of familiarizing yourself with the chosen hockey player, creating a 750 word written report and a five minute pitch for the player, using relevant media tools to support your case. So there is definitely overlap on the agency side of things and the scouting side of things. Does that make sense? Many of the skills that you need to be an agent involve scouting sometimes. Right? So it's the same list here. You're gonna have the same list of players as the analyst. Sorry, the. The scouting people. You can actually have a look at that 4P97 list there. The reason that list is heavily curated because we want to make sure that that's the right age where they're right before they're going to have representation. Some of these players might have representatives themselves. That's okay. Don't worry if that's the case. Just pick from that list. We've definitely curated that list so that it's players that are young enough that are still in the sort of scouting pipeline. We are not talking about players that have already been drafted, for instance. These are real players that could really be honestly using this type of assistance as with the with the scouting assignment. Download Epic Pen or other drawing software if you want to supplement your assignment with video and screenshot analysis. Exemplary submissions will include visual aids accompanying their analysis. So basically what I'm saying is in order to make your pitch more persuasive, you're going to need to show us on screen why you think this player is worthy of representation.
[00:14:40] Familiarize yourself with the hockey player. Use flow hockey to watch games of that player and publicly available information if any. That's the same. The same information there previously. Go to FlowHockey TV and use the course login info that I provided on brightspace.
[00:14:55] Build a report that outlines the case for this player.
[00:14:58] So this is the important part here. The the scouting report which I'll get into in a second.
[00:15:03] Record a three to five minute pitch using supplementary media when applicable to support your case. For example, a PowerPoint slide presentation. Video explanation using Epic Pen, referring to the report throughout your presentation as if you had handed the CEO a copy to begin with in an in person business meeting. So imagine you're sitting at the desk with this McKee McKee. What would I call it again? I called it McKee Sports Ltd. Yes. You're out there in our in our conference room. You're going to hand me the report and then you're going to go over what the report details. Not line by line, but you're going to demonstrate what you say in the report over your recorded pitch. Here's what we're looking for in the report itself. Some light biographical information. Just light. We're talking very much in a couple sentences There an explanation of the Career Players career goals can be hypothetical if it's not publicly available.
[00:15:52] Some base counting statistics from elite prospects, advanced statistics if available. Again, I'm not expecting that is the case. Ceiling floor descriptions and explain your players value to an agency, Future contract, potential, etc. Pitch why does the player deserve to be rented represented by McKee Sports?
[00:16:09] Use the following prompts as inspiration for the elements of the report. What do you foresee in your athletes playing future? What is your player's best asset? Explain why should McKee Sports Limited make a bet on your player?
[00:16:20] So the point here is not to make things up out of nowhere, right? Not to say this player is going to be a 50 goal scorer for the Nashville Predators. I can guarantee it, right? What you want to say here is have a look here. This person's competitiveness, their stride, their explosiveness, right?
[00:16:33] Demonstrate it in the actual slides themselves in the video that you're able to use. If you need help in terms of demonstrating scouting information, have a look at those webinars that I've shown you inside the scouting group folder on brightspace so you can see how the scouting group and the agency group are related in that way. So if you need help sort of demonstrating how to scout in order to best represent your player, have a look at those resources inside the scouting group section to help you out there. Does your player do something differently than their peers? What is your players competitive advantage in the industry?
[00:17:02] Are there direct player or play style comparables in two successful professionals? Explain does this player have a future in professional hockey in any capacity? Explain. Keep in mind that many hockey players are professional, whether it be tier one, tier two or tier three. And from an agency's perspective, having professional hockey players in any capacity is often a worthwhile investment, meaning many agencies, including ones that we've worked with in this course in the past aren't necessarily looking exclusively for future NHLers. If they play in the Coast League, that's fantastic. They play in the American League. Wonderful. Europe, fantastic. That's how you start these agencies off. If you wish to add video, attach your videos to a PowerPoint presentation or record yourself and upload as an MP4.
[00:17:41] How will you be graded on this one? The report content depth, the strength of your pitch, screenshot and video explanations, and any additional media using EpicPenn or something like it.
[00:17:52] So here's the problem we've got right now. Female hockey players are not readily available through flow hockey right now. That said, that that's the truth. If you can find video of a female hockey player. If you'd like to select a female hockey player, I am completely open to this, but I'm just acknowledging the fact that on flow hockey we don't have a really robust resource list of of female hockey teams in the junior level. This is a problem that we've talked about in this course. But if you have a female hockey player that you want to do this on, no problem. Just make sure you can get some video of that player. I just can't guarantee it through the flow hockey database. So if it's on YouTube or whatever, that's fine. Just let me know that you've decided to choose a female hockey player and just ensure that you have enough resources to back it up. But again, that speaks to a larger issue in the scouting industry as a whole, and one that we've talked about throughout this course in terms of barriers.
[00:18:42] Now your final choice is on analytics. Maybe this is something you care a lot about. Maybe you have no idea and you've never done this before, and that's totally fine. You don't need any prior knowledge to be able to tackle this assignment.
[00:18:53] If you have a look on BrightSpace under the analytics tab on the hockey industry assignment, the first thing I want to bring your attention to is the Stat Strat Analytics Seminars. There's three, four, five short little videos there that demonstrate what the principles of analytics are, and it's been prepared by Stat Strat, which is founded by Nick lacoste, Brock sport management graduate and someone who has a lot of experience in this regard, who has scouted for major junior teams in the past and Junior B programs as well. Excellent resource here, and he does an awesome job taking you through the principles of analytics and the practice of analytics. Here's the assignment Comparing analytics to Modern Consensus. The purpose of this assignment is to evaluate a potential disparity based between public Opinions and data driven conclusions. We have a whole week on analytics and that's coming in the coming soon, but we'll be able to get into this topic a little bit more broadly. This is a little bit ahead of ourselves, but in this assignment, students will create a written report exploring the relationship between a player's on ice performance and the statistical reality that might support or contradict that celebrated status.
[00:20:03] Find a poll, an article, a list of hockey players that did not explicitly use analytics to build their list, for example. This is an example. It doesn't need to be this one NHL Network top 50 players or use three award winners from the past three seasons. But you have to use three or more award winners. Explain oversights using analytics. Which player is overrated? Which player is underrated?
[00:20:27] Offer a new list or award winner based solely on analytics using your opinion. Make a third list or name a separate award winner different from the actual or analytics answers that combines what you've learned about analytics, your hockey expertise, the public's opinion.
[00:20:42] So then this is an important part of this. It's about essentially creating a way of justifying your opinions and based on your analytical analysis, explain your case, including players who have moved up and down your list dramatically, and the analytics list and the overall list. And for award winners, include an honorable mention for each of the three awards you've chosen and explain why this player deserves a mention based on analytics, public opinion, or a combination of both.
[00:21:08] If you find that the analytics based opinions are similar to a list or award winner, explain why you think this is. We've given you a list of an example of some lists here, but what we're basically asking you to do is say you find a list of top 50 players or a list of say top 10 players, or the last three award winners in the last three years for say the Norris Trophy for top defenseman. I want you to use websites and again there's descriptions of how to do that and come up with a new list that's based solely on those numbers based analysis and then a third list that would be two lists of your creation and one from the list that we provided you of ones that combine both the previous award winners and your analytics analysis.
[00:21:48] So this one again involves the two sort of list creations and students will present their findings as a 1000 word written report that includes all of the information outlined above. Submissions can include visual aids accompanying your analysis such as screenshots, video screen recordings, screenshots and videos. Key can be included as appendices, PowerPoint presentations, or recorded content that ties in to your written report. So this is your chance to demonstrate the fact that, okay, the public consensus on players is X, Y and Z. I believe I can demonstrate to you that there's, there's a better use of this information where I think that there's a better way of, of, of demonstrating who the best defenseman is or who the best sell key player is. You name it. But what we're looking for here is a really important part, this assignment, which is to say, if you're interested in analytics as a whole, being able to communicate to the public, to the hockey industry as a whole, that a, you can use numbers in your analysis, fantastic. But that you are not simply spitting out numbers, that you're able to demonstrate a reasoned analysis and the ability to combine multiple points of view in your recommendations. That's ultimately crucial in terms of saying, oh well, the people think that this player is good and I think this player is better. That's really not that important. I need to be able to see if I'm in the front office of an NHL team or a major junior team or you name it. I need to be able to see that you, the potential hiree, has an ability to synthesize multiple points of view that is crucial in the hockey job market right now. Not simply having a capability to spit out numbers because again, don't forget, they can do that relatively cheaply and they can do that in house. What they need are human beings that can synthesize bits of information.
[00:23:24] So you've got a top 10 list create or a top 50 list, or top 20 list, or top 5 list, create your own list based solely on numbers and then create a third list that combines the two. Alright, that's what we're looking for here. And then after that list, explain why you've done it the way you've done it, what things led to players being overlooked in your opinion. And if you need help, and I think you likely will need help in this regard here, this is a little more beyond the pale for what you would normally be asked in analytics situation. Have a look at those seminars provided by statstrat. And being able to cite that directly in your analysis is only going to help you there as well. Right? And in there we've also described the various websites that you can use to sort of help you on the statistical journey you're on. But it's, it's crucial to go through those seminars. And if you have a question about what to do for this assignment, make sure you've watched those seminars first they're not very long and they're, they're incredibly valuable. And it's, it's really important, as if you're looking to do analytics, not just in hockey, but in other places that you, that you think carefully about how you're going to demonstrate your expertise, how you're going to combine your expertise with the established public wisdom and compose a report that demonstrates you can do both. And I guarantee you, if you do this assignment, I really do encourage you, no matter where you are, that you can use this and actually publish it online. And if that's something you're interested in, please let me know and we can work with you in getting your work afterwards published in an online format somewhere. But it depends on, again, the nature of the work that you prepare and the quality of the submission itself.
[00:24:53] Okay, so there's the four groups there. Event planning, analytics, scouting, and a hockey agency. Each of them, you have a choice about how you want to move forward with this assignment.
[00:25:05] Full information about the due dates is available on BrightSpace, but we are looking for, you know, really practical experience to give you and a really practical task. But I really do encourage you. Again, a couple notes on this assignment. Give this one an honest effort, right? Don't simply rely on established public wisdom. Don't simply rely on generative AI. Don't simply rely on these, these tools. This is an opportunity to genuinely try. This might be your third year, this might be your fourth year. If you are interested in the hockey industry, fantastic. If you have no interest in hockey at all, if you and you simply needed this for an elective, I understand that too. But give this an honest effort because there's an opportunity here to add this to a portfolio moving forward.
[00:25:48] Right. And we've gone through great care to make sure that there is practical implications from what you're doing in this assignment. It's not simply just for my own benefit. So please, I desperately encourage you here and one of the last few opportunities you have at Brock here in your final two years to really give this assignment specifically an honest effort. So if you've got questions, I'm going to make the TAs available as well to answer questions as well. They're going to incredible resources for you in this assignment and pop into office hours as well. And I'm happy to answer questions there and I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with this assignment. This seminar was a lot of fun the last few years and I'm sure this year is going to be no excitement.
[00:27:03] Sam.
