Las Vegas NHL scout Erin Ginnell knows where to find hidden talent
EDMONTON, Alberta — Erin Ginnell could sit in the press box at Rogers Place. But on this night, he prefers to sit among the fans.
Not that he doesn’t trust his fellow scouts. He gets along just fine with the other teams’ bird dogs. But his business is a clandestine one, and he’s not concerned that some white-haired grandmother isn’t about to get ahold of his notes on a defenseman for the Kootenay Ice and pass them along to the Edmonton Oilers.
He also prefers to sit at the end of the rink rather than in the middle because he thinks he gets a better overall view of the players, particularly goaltenders.
“This is a tight fraternity,” Ginnell said Saturday before watching Kootenay play the Edmonton Oil Kings in a Western Hockey League junior game. “But it’s very secretive. My brother scouts for St. Louis, and our mom won’t tell him I’m here in Edmonton.”
Ginnell, 48, is the Western Canada amateur scout for the Las Vegas NHL expansion team. But he goes all over Canada to watch players, and he’ll even go south to the United States to evaluate prospects.
Ginnell has been on the road his entire life. His father, Pat, helped form the Western Hockey League and also was a coach and general manager. So there were plenty of stops for the Flin Flon, Manitoba, native.
“I’m a hockey brat,” Ginnell said. “I’ve been in a lot of small towns, traveled a lot of miles.”
Ginnell guesses in a typical hockey season, he’ll drive more than 40,000 miles and fly well over 100,000. All in trying to get a line on a player who can be the difference between having a winning organization or a losing one.
“I don’t mind,” he said of the nights on the road. “It gives me time to think.”
SEEN BOTH SIDES
Ginnell has been on both sides. He was a scout when the Columbus Blue Jackets entered the NHL in 2000, the last time the league expanded before adding Las Vegas in June. The Blue Jackets struggled for years.
He also spent 13 years with the Florida Panthers, the last five as director of amateur scouting, and was part of developing the team’s resurgence the last couple of years in recommending the team draft Aaron Ekblad, Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, Vincent Trocheck and Denis Maglin, who all have been primary contributors to the Panthers’ success.
That reputation wasn’t lost on Las Vegas general manager George McPhee. When the Panthers shook up their front office last summer and Ginnell was fired, McPhee contacted him and Ginnell agreed to work again for an organization that never had played a game and had no players.
“It’s much different than it was in Columbus,” Ginnell said of Las Vegas’ situation. “In 2000, there were fewer teams to select players from, we had to share the pool with Minnesota, and there was no salary cap.
“With Las Vegas, we’ll have a larger player pool to pick from, there’s no one to share it with, and there’s a cap.”
And while the expansion draft will be critical to Las Vegas’ early success, the amateur draft will be more important toward the team’s long-term viability. Ginnell is the second part of the evaluation process. The team’s scouts will identify someone they’ve seen, and Ginnell will watch that player. He’ll file his daily reports on “RinkNet,” the database all 31 NHL teams use and which McPhee and assistant general manager Kelly McCrimmon will read.
Those reports are concise. As Ginnell said: “I’m looking for a snapshot on a kid. I don’t need to write a novel.”
No doubt his bosses appreciate his brevity.
“Erin’s been doing this a long time,” McCrimmon said. “The hardest part about scouting is trying to project where a kid will eventually wind up. He has the ability to project and assess talent. You saw that when he was in Florida.”
Ginnell said the first thing he looks for in any player is the most simple discipline: Can he skate?
“If a kid can’t skate, forget it,” he said. “Today’s game is all about speed and transition, and if you can’t skate, you can’t play in today’s NHL. It’s as simple as that.”
WHAT HE SEES
Assuming a player can skate, Ginnell focuses on how fundamentally sound the player is, his hockey IQ, his on-ice demeanor and what kind of teammate he is. He’ll also talk with coaches, trainers, equipment managers and even the parents a player is living with to get a feel for the kind of person he is off the ice.
“You’d be surprised how much accurate information you can get on a kid,” he said.
But he’s also cognizant that a player might be playing out of position or in a system that’s counterintuitive to his skills or the coach of the team couldn’t connect with the player.
“I’ll watch a fourth-line kid in warmups to see how he’s handling the puck and how much his head is in the game,” Ginnell said. “Players fall through the cracks through no fault of their own. And that’s how you can uncover the gems, the third-, fourth- and fifth-round picks who make it to the NHL because you saw something the other teams didn’t.”
Because Las Vegas is guaranteed one of the top six picks in the amateur draft, it makes focusing on the top players a little easier for the scouting staff. The team already has its big board set up with names of hundreds of players it is evaluating and what rounds they figure to be drafted. The amateur draft will be June 23 and 24 in Chicago.
On Saturday, Edmonton’s 3-0 win over Kootenay probably didn’t reveal any lottery picks. Both teams have struggled this season in the WHL, and Ginnell didn’t come away with the sense someone had jumped onto Las Vegas’ first-round board. But it wasn’t a wasted trip, as he prepared to head back in his car and drive through the rain to his home in Calgary, three hours away.
“There’s no such thing as a wasted trip because you never know what you might see if you go, or what you might have missed if you didn’t go,” he said.
Contact Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow @stevecarprj on Twitter.
THE GINNELL FILE
Who: Erin Ginnell
What: Western Canada amateur scout, Las Vegas NHL expansion team
Age: 48
Residence: Calgary, Alberta
Experience: Amateur scout, Columbus Blue Jackets (2000-2002), amateur scout, Colorado Avalanche (2002-2003), amateur scout, Florida Panthers (2003-2011) director of amateur scouting, Florida Panthers (2011-2016)
Did you know?: Ginnell’s brother Danny is a scout for the St. Louis Blues.
