And the New York Red Bulls select…

“I don’t know how important the MLS Draft is to the Red Bulls, but they do have the fattest draft book. They have certainly done their homework.” ~ ESPN commentary

Not that The New York Red Bulls needed validation from ESPN on their study habits, but I’m sure they would agree.  

EXACT Sports have again assisted the Red Bulls in fulfilling their wish list. The Red Bulls knew what they wanted early on. In early meetings with EXACT, they said their most desired psycological trait was a player who will always train hard and will never give up on a game. Well, New York, Corey Hertzog is your guy.

I won’t go on and on about how he led the NCAA in scoring this year with 20 goals (a Big Ten record), or how he was a semifinalist for the Herman Trophy, or that he’s Second Team All American & a unanimous pick for First Team All-Big Ten. I’m sure there are other articles out there can tell you all about his accolades and career stats. However, this isn’t about those great things. I would prefer to talk about how Hertzog uses his head (besides heading crosses in the back of the net).

The New York Red Bulls have drafted more than just a guy that looks good on paper. They have landed themselves a 6’0, 172lb psychological workhorse. Hertzog scored very highly in “Persistence to Goals” & “Motivation.” That basically translates into someone that will never run out of fuel on his way to get to where he wants to go.  Complimenting those mental attributes are high scores in “Training Attitudes” & “Reaction to coaching.” All this adds up to a talented young player that head coach Hans Backe will most likely have a great time coaching.

There are no guarantees that Hertzog will have a standout rookie year like his new team mate Tim Ream, but all signs point to he has what it takes to be that good. Without making any lofty projections, I believe that Hertzog will have the opportunity to work hard and earn some quality minutes on the pitch this year.

Best of luck to NYRB & Corey Hertzog on the upcoming season.

Recap of the 2010 National Hockey League Combine

I just returned from an awesome weekend in Toronto at the 2010 NHL Combines.  EXACT Sports has been evaluating top hockey players at the Combines for some time now, but this was only my second year in attendance. For those who are not familiar with the Pre-Draft Combines, NHL’s Central Scouting invites the top 100 prospects to Toronto to be put through rigorous fitness tests, psychological tests and medical testing, as well as one-on-one interviews all in preparation for the upcoming draft.

EXACT Sports is responsible for administering the psychological tests, as well as three stations during the combine — Hex Agility, Balance, and Neuro-cognitive testing.  Much of the psychological testing is administered prior to the Combine itself, while the Neuro-cognitive testing is administered immediately after the players complete their Wingate and VO2Max testing. The Wingate tests measure explosive speed and fatigue, while the VO2Max test measures endurance. EXACT’s neuro-cognitive test then measures a player’s reaction time and spatial awareness and helps provide a fatigue index.

From a player’s standpoint, the time spent at the Combine has to be difficult as they must not only endure physical, psychological and medical testing, but they must endure countless hours of interviews with teams and the media.  I do not think I would want to be in their shoes, but I guess I need to look at it from a different perspective, as the NHL combines bring them one step closer to their dreams of becoming an NHL player and represents a culmination of a lifetime of practice and training.

On the other hand, the NHL teams are trying to assimilate and integrate information from a multitude of sources (scouting, player interviews, staff meetings, results from the Combines, and player stats) to help them to draft the right players that will benefit their organization.

EXACT Sports relishes their role in helping the NHL evaluate players and assist in providing teams with comprehensive feedback on the mental make-up of each of the prospects.

NHL and EXACT Sports (Part 2)

Below is an excerpt from the news article regarding a very interesting discussion we had with the scouts.

4/5/2009

What does Dr. Tarter look for?
TORONTO — The presence of Dr. Ralph Tarter during the first two days of the Central Scouting meetings here at the Conn Smythe Boardroom was certainly beneficial. The hope is Dr. Tarter’s findings will soon provide professional and amateur scouts an evaluation of a player’s psyche away from the rink.

Dr. Tarter asked the scouts to provide him with physical characteristics they see, and not necessarily the labels they attach, when watching and evaluating these prospects.

Here are a few of the words and phrases, along with responses from the scouts, retrieved by Dr. Tarter. This bit of feedback, according to Dr. Tarter, will go a long way in allowing his organization, EXACT Sports, to project the possible journey an amateur hockey player will take on the road to an NHL career.

“Through our findings, we could also find those athletes ranked lower who have the potential of truly excelling with the right environment,” Dr. Tarter said. “That’s what will make one or two teams truly become competitive.”

As an example, Dr. Tarter initially asked the scouts how they measure heart in a player. “When you use the word heart to describe an athlete, what are you seeing that we can measure?” he asked…

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We went on to discuss character traits such as heart, confidence, motivation, mental toughness, leadership, and maturity, and how scouts view those traits in athletes and what it means to them.

NHL’s work with EXACT Sports (Part 1)

It’s really exciting for us to be a part of something special with the NHL so I wanted to talk a little bit about it here.  For quite some time now we’ve been working with NHL Central Scouting to help them understand player development needs.   Every year they do this it’s amazing to see the hard work of their staff come together for their annual rankings.   Over the course of the hockey season, the scouts are viewing players dozens of times, comparing notes, discussing them, and then it’s at this week+ meeting where they review their notes and compile a final ranking that takes into account the aggregate expertise of every scout in the room.   It’s pretty difficult.  For example, one of the biggest challenges they face is how to compare players who play in different leagues and competition level, and they’ve spent considerable time developing a decision process to help.
They are very thorough and thoughtful in understanding each and every player’s unique style and potential, and the discussions are quite robust.   Given the importance and difficulty of their job, it was interesting to see how they undertook their decision making process in a way that was fair, unbiased, and supported the teams.

Read on for more details…

4/5/2009

By Mike G. Morreale – NHL.com Staff Writer

TORONTO — Words alone cannot describe the talent that the NHL’s Central Scouting Service witnesses on a daily basis over the course of a single season.

After loading their notebooks and Excel spreadsheets with their findings, it’s back to headquarters inside Air Canada Centre, where a dozen or so of those hockey junkies will conduct a week-long meeting of the minds to determine where 210 skaters and 30 goalies will fall in the final ranking of North American prospects for the upcoming NHL Entry Draft.

It certainly is an arduous and, at times, thankless job, but Central Scouting Director E.J. McGuire and his crew aren’t intimidated. That’s the feeling emanating from the detailed meetings this week.

The more eyes and ears that are on deck, the better, and that’s precisely why Dr. Ralph Tarter, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences, psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, was front and center at this weekend’s meetings to listen and offer some assistance. He’ll also be utilized at the Draft Combine beginning May 26 at the Westin Bristol Place Toronto Airport Hotel.

“Dr. Tarter and his staff allow Central Scouting some off-ice feedback to the teams,” McGuire told NHL.com. “What he brings is an objective view from an educator’s perspective not only from our statistical side and how we load our voting, but also from the behavioral side in what might be our weakest area — a player’s personality.”

Dr. Tarter, who sat only a few feet from the scouts over the first two days of meetings here at the Conn Smythe Boardroom, was invited in an effort to establish some sort of edge for those NHL and amateur scouts by creating a recipe with future off-ice evaluations.

Let’s face it, there’s no exact science to predicting that a skater from the Ontario Hockey League should be rated one slot higher than one starring in the Western Hockey League. In fact, that’s usually the sticking point when the scouts begin debating and scrutinizing those players on their list. But that’s what Dr. Tarter is hoping to find out and, in the process, provide professional scouts with much more than your average report card composed of those everyday clichés claiming that a player has “heart, leadership and courage.”

“We’ve heard words during these meetings that everyone has a sense for, but when we try to value those attributes of the person, we have to put it into words and sentences. What I needed from these scouts were their interpretations of some words that were said during my monitoring of the meetings,” Dr. Tarter said. “We need to put these words into a scalable, objective form that could be quantified, so I needed to say these words and find out exactly what the scouts are physically seeing in the athlete when they use them.”

Truth be told, the 20-minute discussion was rather riveting and forced several of the scouts, including Ontario-based Chris Edwards, mid-west based Jack Barzee, WHL scouts Peter Sullivan and Blair MacDonald, goalie scout Al Jensen and McGuire, to put on their thinking caps — yet again.

“The factors that go into evaluating and predicting an athlete are extremely complex,” Dr. Tarter said. “They are inter-related with each other since we’re looking at kids who are still in the process of development. It’s like predicting how good wine will be when it’s still in the fomenting stage.”

Dr. Tarter, incidentally, was the impetus behind the founding of EXACT Sports in 1997. The company is a professional, scientific organization consisting of experts in youth development, kinesiology, neuropsychology and sports analytics. Through EXACT, Dr. Tarter leverages his expertise in evaluation and intervention to promote the monitoring and development of athletes.

“It’s a strange dilemma because we have different scouts looking at different athletes in different leagues at different levels of competitiveness,” Dr. Tarter said. “How in the world can you get one ranking of all your athletes across different kinds of positions? That’s a tremendous challenge and that’s why I’m here.”

Dr. Tarter and his staff, who have assisted Central Scouting the last four years, hope to project a player’s psychological path to the NHL.

“What EXACT does is provide a player tracker for athletes at all levels and to monitor the tracking or trajectory of an athlete,” Dr. Tarter said. “Once we identify what the trajectory direction is and the slope of that trajectory, based on that information, we’ll be able to help recruiting organizations, such as the NHL, make a more accurate assessment of how long it will take an athlete to play in the NHL and, once there, how good they’re going to be.”