You know the ones I mean. Most of those that sell their product for money, especially the ones written by former HF-ers (Ed: HFBoards.com members).
Writing a good scouting report is not random - there has to be some methodology to it. Most folks don't get this. I'm sick and tried of reading crappy scouting reports, written by people who think they've become experts after lurking on hf for a couple of years.
I will tell you what a good scouting report is and there are basically two kinds (it can be broken down further, of course). The worst scouting reports can be exposed for being a confused jumble of the two or in worst cases neither. Some are bad, because they take one side and do an incompetent job.
Scouting report type #1: Ontology.
Folks who see players and write up these kinds of reports believe that they can get across a lot of information about a player simply by breaking down his game into a list of traits. Skating, shooting, vision, stickhandling, etc. It's a belief that scouting is mechanistic, and so are essentially people (in this case, hockey players). This sees an athlete as an abstraction that can be exposed, dissected and studied.
Scouting report type #2: Phenomenology.
This is the most difficult kind of a scouting report to master. It can be done very badly, but in best cases extremely well and those that are really well written are fun to read and personal. The scout in this case doesn't believe that a human being is a mere collage of particulars - rather, every single trait in a player is supported by another. An athlete in this case must be assessed holistically. Not only this, but the scouting report itself has to be written in terms of models and situations. Saying that a player is a good skater with excellent quickness is insufficient, because this doesn't illustrate a situation. A situation illustrates a scenario, in which phenomena occur that can be tied in to the discussed player in which a player performs a certain way holistically in relation to the ongoing play in relation to recalled (by scout) plays. The task of the scout is to abstract the situation and assess it from a personal standpoint. "Here's what the player did, here's how he did it and here's what I think about it. Here's what I can compare it to." "I think it worked because...", "I don't think it worked because..." Often the judgement is made through sheer intuition. The clever scout will incorporate his own experiences and recollections and compare the situation to other situations that he's seen, thus clariying his opinion on the player.
This kind of scouting is "implicate" - it functions on the belief that no player can be properly analyzed or understood without implicating the viewing scout's keen knowledge of hockey. By implicating himself into the scouting report, the scout also implicates the reader to identify and engage with what is written. Insight is fluid. Insight is dialogical. It should paint a picture in such a way that everyone who is exposed to it can react and creatively link the player and situation to other players and situations.
An example of pure scouting ontology is Central Scouting. So much so that it is almost exceedingly dry. Reading a CSS report, one cannot get any kind of handle on a player, because the blurb will merely list one trait after another. The writing isn't personal, the writing barely refers to hockey beyond the mechanistic, the writing often runs out of effective words to get its point across.
The best kind of ontology in scouting is extremely in-depth. I've seen this, but mostly in respect to tennis. I haven't seen a lot of good scouting of this kind in hockey. One could write a whole page about a player's wrist shot or first step, or whatever. Often it's quite fun to read and can be rewarding. In some cases the writing will flow towards analogy and thus become both phenomenology and narratology (the latter, because of the recall of stories; eg. "player x's backhand on this particular play reminded me of the time Bobby Orr scored a wrap-around goal on a backhand").
Close to pure phenomenology of scouting I think is redline report. I haven't read anything of theirs since about 2005, but from what I recall they're low on exact detail and high on 'the situation' stuff. They'll tell you what happened, when and how and how they felt about it. They'll tell you what it may mean in the long run. This kind of writing is hard to do, but they're good at it. It's personal. It doesn't matter whether it offends. Actually, it's better when it does. Sometimes it's too short - the worst offenses is when black humour replaces true insight, thus turning the player into a stereotype to caricature (eg. the sparkplug, the idiot, the dirty rotten bastard).
The important thing is that these two services at least know the difference. Central Scouting takes their explicit approach, because they feel they have to be objective. Or at least they have to appear objective. Writing their reports must be like writing for public service. It is nuanced nothing.
NHL scouts, the ones that do the real stuff, do both. I'm sure that every team has its own methodology, but eventually it breaks down into two things. You have to establish some basics first and that means separating the strengths from the weaknesses. These are, first of foremost, mechanistic. Bad skater? You may as well stop scouting the guy.
But if you keep scouting the guy, the rest of the work involves really heavy abstract work. You have to look for situations, illustrate them for the purposes of visualizing them later. This includes countless and countless examples of how the player handles himself in numerous situations and amounts to a very personal profile. And people are complex, often in ways they don't even themselves understand. Scouts want to know these kids better than these kids know themselves. And very often this requires quite a bit of intuition. Not luck, mind you. Intuition implicates personal experience. Intuition is when you have really studied the person.
So please do yourself a favour. Don't buy cheap shit like FC or whatever other stuff that is written by children with very little ideas or insights. You will know it when you see it - just read the reports and ask yourselves if they're written by a human being who truly cares about the player, or just some guy spewing cliches that have been said countless times.
Reposted, with permission, from a HockeyBroads.com post by Dr_Chimera.
Writing a good scouting report is not random - there has to be some methodology to it. Most folks don't get this. I'm sick and tried of reading crappy scouting reports, written by people who think they've become experts after lurking on hf for a couple of years.
I will tell you what a good scouting report is and there are basically two kinds (it can be broken down further, of course). The worst scouting reports can be exposed for being a confused jumble of the two or in worst cases neither. Some are bad, because they take one side and do an incompetent job.
Scouting report type #1: Ontology.
Folks who see players and write up these kinds of reports believe that they can get across a lot of information about a player simply by breaking down his game into a list of traits. Skating, shooting, vision, stickhandling, etc. It's a belief that scouting is mechanistic, and so are essentially people (in this case, hockey players). This sees an athlete as an abstraction that can be exposed, dissected and studied.
Scouting report type #2: Phenomenology.
This is the most difficult kind of a scouting report to master. It can be done very badly, but in best cases extremely well and those that are really well written are fun to read and personal. The scout in this case doesn't believe that a human being is a mere collage of particulars - rather, every single trait in a player is supported by another. An athlete in this case must be assessed holistically. Not only this, but the scouting report itself has to be written in terms of models and situations. Saying that a player is a good skater with excellent quickness is insufficient, because this doesn't illustrate a situation. A situation illustrates a scenario, in which phenomena occur that can be tied in to the discussed player in which a player performs a certain way holistically in relation to the ongoing play in relation to recalled (by scout) plays. The task of the scout is to abstract the situation and assess it from a personal standpoint. "Here's what the player did, here's how he did it and here's what I think about it. Here's what I can compare it to." "I think it worked because...", "I don't think it worked because..." Often the judgement is made through sheer intuition. The clever scout will incorporate his own experiences and recollections and compare the situation to other situations that he's seen, thus clariying his opinion on the player.
This kind of scouting is "implicate" - it functions on the belief that no player can be properly analyzed or understood without implicating the viewing scout's keen knowledge of hockey. By implicating himself into the scouting report, the scout also implicates the reader to identify and engage with what is written. Insight is fluid. Insight is dialogical. It should paint a picture in such a way that everyone who is exposed to it can react and creatively link the player and situation to other players and situations.
An example of pure scouting ontology is Central Scouting. So much so that it is almost exceedingly dry. Reading a CSS report, one cannot get any kind of handle on a player, because the blurb will merely list one trait after another. The writing isn't personal, the writing barely refers to hockey beyond the mechanistic, the writing often runs out of effective words to get its point across.
The best kind of ontology in scouting is extremely in-depth. I've seen this, but mostly in respect to tennis. I haven't seen a lot of good scouting of this kind in hockey. One could write a whole page about a player's wrist shot or first step, or whatever. Often it's quite fun to read and can be rewarding. In some cases the writing will flow towards analogy and thus become both phenomenology and narratology (the latter, because of the recall of stories; eg. "player x's backhand on this particular play reminded me of the time Bobby Orr scored a wrap-around goal on a backhand").
Close to pure phenomenology of scouting I think is redline report. I haven't read anything of theirs since about 2005, but from what I recall they're low on exact detail and high on 'the situation' stuff. They'll tell you what happened, when and how and how they felt about it. They'll tell you what it may mean in the long run. This kind of writing is hard to do, but they're good at it. It's personal. It doesn't matter whether it offends. Actually, it's better when it does. Sometimes it's too short - the worst offenses is when black humour replaces true insight, thus turning the player into a stereotype to caricature (eg. the sparkplug, the idiot, the dirty rotten bastard).
The important thing is that these two services at least know the difference. Central Scouting takes their explicit approach, because they feel they have to be objective. Or at least they have to appear objective. Writing their reports must be like writing for public service. It is nuanced nothing.
NHL scouts, the ones that do the real stuff, do both. I'm sure that every team has its own methodology, but eventually it breaks down into two things. You have to establish some basics first and that means separating the strengths from the weaknesses. These are, first of foremost, mechanistic. Bad skater? You may as well stop scouting the guy.
But if you keep scouting the guy, the rest of the work involves really heavy abstract work. You have to look for situations, illustrate them for the purposes of visualizing them later. This includes countless and countless examples of how the player handles himself in numerous situations and amounts to a very personal profile. And people are complex, often in ways they don't even themselves understand. Scouts want to know these kids better than these kids know themselves. And very often this requires quite a bit of intuition. Not luck, mind you. Intuition implicates personal experience. Intuition is when you have really studied the person.
So please do yourself a favour. Don't buy cheap shit like FC or whatever other stuff that is written by children with very little ideas or insights. You will know it when you see it - just read the reports and ask yourselves if they're written by a human being who truly cares about the player, or just some guy spewing cliches that have been said countless times.
Reposted, with permission, from a HockeyBroads.com post by Dr_Chimera.
