Before Bill Armstrong became Utah Hockey Club’s general manager, he was a St. Louis Blues scout for nearly 20 years.
Armstrong can still recall when RinkNet — a database of player stats and rankings — was introduced to the NHL in the late 1990s. For some veteran scouts who weren’t as ready for the laptop era of hockey, it was not a welcome change.
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“They had a rebellion,” Armstrong, 58, says now, laughing, “because they couldn’t type.”
Today, teams trying to find the next wave of talent need scouts to do a lot more than tap on their keyboard. They’ve got to tap into a new world of technology that features full-length games at their fingertips and advanced analytics that they’re delivering to prospects younger than ever before.
Sportlogiq, like RinkNet before it, revolutionized the industry when it started in 2015. The company lists 31 NHL teams as clients and provides clubs with “a computer vision and machine learning technology that tracks what the human eye cannot” by using raw data and tools powered by artificial intelligence. Of those 31 teams, 27 subscribe to the junior package that covers video for their prospects outside the NHL.
“We’re trying to know the player better than he’s ever been known before,” says Armstrong, whose organization uses Sportlogiq. “It’s just an importance the whole NHL has on their prospect pool of making it. Draft picks are at a premium and getting them to work out is not an option, so you’ve got to invest a lot of time and money into them.
“Our whole motto is ‘Innovate or die.’”
Those innovations are already happening — all over the league and sport. They have been for years. The challenge teams face now is taking the opportunities that new technology offers and making the most of them.
When Armstrong was scouting for the Blues, they would draft a player and the local scout would watch him play and write up a postgame report. The scout might’ve dropped off a hat from the NHL club, too.
“But as far as giving you some advice about how you’re playing,” Armstrong recalls, “the scout might say, ‘Hey, maybe if you did this a little bit better …’”
“Didn’t have that type of access or someone to watch your games, talk to you after, go over video, go on the ice and work with you,” added Dan Cleary, the Detroit Red Wings’ assistant director of player development and the 13th pick in the 1997 NHL Draft. “Just didn’t have that extension, if that makes sense.”
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If an NHL team had a development coach, they’d likely go see the prospect once or twice a year. If there was a summer development camp, that would be another opportunity. Or if the player participated in the World Junior Championship.
On average, Armstrong says, there were three or four “touches,” or viewings, in a year.
“There was one development guy that traveled around the world,” he said, “and the world is too big.”
Thanks to modern tools and technology, the NHL’s development landscape has been completely transformed from those days. In addition to having full-time staffers to work with players, new services such as Sportlogiq and InStat allow teams to keep fully abreast of all the happenings with their prospects around the globe.
Cleary used the example of having a prospect in Sweden playing on a Sunday.
“If I wasn’t there, I’m able to watch his game in pretty good depth — like shift to shift, zone to zone, you can filter a lot of different things — by Monday,” Cleary said.
In 2024-25, all 32 teams in the league have a player development coach and many have added more staff. Scouts are seeing players as many as eight to 10 times per season, and the evaluations are a lot more sophisticated with extensive analytics and video.
And it’s not just goals and assists being tracked now — it’s entries, exits, puck battles and recoveries. Now, there’s a number attached to all the little things you might have once had to eyeball.
The collection of that data could be a story in itself — computers analyzing a game, supplemented by “manual quality assurance” to validate data points. If the computer struggles to identify something — such as who really “won” a faceoff that pinballs off skates or a board battle on a difficult angle for the camera — then it can flag the event and the person assigned to the game can identify the answer.
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The smoothness of that process is, naturally, somewhat dependent on the quality of video, which can vary by arena and league. But once they have the footage, Sportlogiq’s computers can identify which players are on the ice, then track their movements, passes and shots, as well as subtler elements, such as who wins a given puck battle.
In total, Sportlogiq collects approximately 4,000 data points per game, according to Derek Arnold, the company’s director of business development for hockey. That data can give teams a decent picture of what happened and, crucially, allows teams to watch the corresponding video that comes with it. All the data is linked back to video.
“If you’re a scout and you wanted to watch this defenseman’s controlled exits, you would have the ability to click on basically a number from that game — the number of controlled exits he had — (and) it takes you right to the video,” Arnold says.
When teams can take large swaths of that information over multiple years, it becomes even more valuable for identifying trends and patterns.
“When a team looks at the data point for that young prospect in their draft-eligible year, they can go back and say, ‘OK, we can project this to be — when he’s 24 and he’s in the NHL, we can project him to be here,’” Arnold says.
For a GM, that big-picture look can paint a picture of how a player is progressing and help them plan. And for a development coach, the sortable data and video can create coaching points for them to apply with their prospects throughout the season.
Just having the data and video is no longer revolutionary, though. As Armstrong readily notes, “Everybody has that information, so I just think it’s a tighter race now.”
The key, then, is simply: Who can use it best?
And that question can be borderline existential for teams that play in unsexy markets or lack the financial muscle to lure top talent in free agency.
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Drafting and developing works in the NHL — but only if the development comes to fruition.
Baseball remains the gold standard for advanced stats in sports, and the same is true in player development, where teams have proven to be able to add velocity to pitchers’ fastballs and alter pitches and swings to mold young players the entire way up to the big leagues.
There is even a pitching machine, called “Trajekt,” that allows hitters to practice against a given pitcher’s exact pitch specifications in preparation for facing him.
But baseball has arguably the perfect conditions for that level of data and technological integration: a game that features a hitter against a pitcher in fixed circumstances that can be more easily isolated.
Hockey, meanwhile, is a flow sport. A goalie doesn’t know exactly where a shooter will shoot from, or how many other players might be standing in between himself and the puck. He doesn’t know if there will be a pass option he has to account for as he sets up. And a shooter, likewise, has no idea when or where a scoring chance will arise, or how much time he can count on having to make the most of it.
Still, teams work on the underlying abilities that help their players make the most of those situations: their skating and stickhandling, their ability to read a situation and make the best possible choice, and how to maximize their shot.
“You’re never going to take a bad player and make him good, so the scouts have to see some goodness in them, and then pass them along to the development guys,” Armstrong said. “But now we’re doing that a little bit with the eyes and the numbers.”
Hockey will likely never be on baseball’s level, and teams will never be able to truly perfect the art of developing a player.
But they have every reason to try.
Once every two weeks, Armstrong meets with Utah’s scouting and development staff on a Zoom call to discuss the organization’s prospects. They pore over the numbers, and the GM asks about each player: Is he making progress? Is he going sideways? Backward?
To prepare for those reports, Armstrong relies on people such as Lee Stempniak, a 14-year veteran player hired as a data analyst and later promoted to director of player development.
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Stempniak said he relies on Sportlogiq “a ton.” In fact, he was searching the site when The Athletic reached out recently.
“The way it’s able to break the video down, in certain situations, it’s incredibly useful,” Stempniak said. “You can see trends in what they’re doing.
“How quickly are they getting back to the puck? Are they pressured? How many times does he dump it out? Or maybe he’s doing a good job and his partner is throwing pucks back to him and he’s under siege.”
The challenge when analyzing the information and then presenting it, Stempniak says, is deciding which numbers are useful and which are just interesting. Which ones help a player play better and a team win more games?
“You’re prioritizing what things are really valuable versus what things are just noise,” Stempniak said. “It’s definitely thorough, but to me, it’s not the be-all, end-all. I’d be lying to you if I said that (the analytics) had all the answers.
“I think that’s where there’s a little bit of an art to it — taking the numbers, using the eye test and blending the two together to see, ‘Hey, this makes sense and this doesn’t make sense.’ It’s part of the process for us.”
When teams have a firm feel for what they want from a player, they can deliver that information to their prospects, whether they’re in European pro leagues, junior hockey or NCAA, and let them start working on it.
“I’ve always found that sometimes the player gets to the NHL and then you’re trying to change him,” Armstrong said. “I think the biggest thing before they get to the NHL — give them an understanding of the corrections they need to make, so when they get here they’re not like, ‘Oh my God, it’s so much coming at me.’
“That way, when they get here and the coach looks them in the eye and says, ‘You’ve got to do this,’ they go, ‘Yep, I’m working on it and I’ve got a good understanding of it.’”
University of Minnesota hockey coach Bob Motzko has been behind a college bench for 20 seasons, including the last seven with the Golden Gophers.
Minnesota has an open-door policy for NHL development coaches to visit players, and there’s been a lot of interaction. The Gophers have had six first-round draft picks in Motzko’s tenure, which has given him an up-close look at the transformation in NHL player development.
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“We watch some NHL teams, and they’re unbelievable how they communicate, and then there are some that can be a little overbearing,” Motzko says, sitting in his office at 3M Arena. “These are still young kids, and it’s still new, so I think everybody’s learning.
“There’s value in it, but you have to be cautious. How many voices can you have? You’ve got parents, you’ve got agents, you’ve got coaches, and now you’ve got development coaches. For some of these guys, it’s a little overwhelming.”
Ultimately, it’s a relationship that’s built on trust between the NHL club, the college team and the players themselves.
“That’s one of the first things we clarify — they play for that coach,” Stempniak says. “If you’re doing everything we want you to do, but you’re not pleasing your coach, he’s not going to play you, and that’s not good for anyone.
“So the coach dictates that, and for us, it’s filling in the gaps and giving the player pointers that can be applied to any system. The biggest thing is the player knowing you have their best interest at heart and your goals are aligned.”
There’s also the question of how much information those prospects can retain at once. And like anything, each player has their own needs and wants that teams have to be conscious of.
“Some guys really love video, some guys like the more — they need to see it and feel it on the ice,” Cleary said. “And other guys (are) not as needy for a ‘touch.’”
Gophers winger Jimmy Snuggerud, whom the Blues selected No. 23 in the 2022 NHL Draft, works directly with Blues development coach Chris Thorburn, who sends him video of his shifts each week with notes on each. Snuggerud could tell Thorburn he doesn’t want that information but says he enjoys it.
“I like how I get to learn weekly, not just our team film, but film from him, too,” Snuggerud says. “I just think you have to get used to it because it’s an up-and-coming thing, and it’s all used to make yourself a better player.”
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Some little detail in there could be the difference between making it or not. Entire careers could have changed if these resources existed in the past — even for someone like Armstrong, a Flyers third-round pick in 1990 who never reached the NHL.
“It happened to me as a player when I got to the minor leagues — you get slapped in the face pretty hard,” said Armstrong, who spent nine seasons in the minors before retiring. “You’re going to camp and you’re reading your name in ‘The Hockey News’ about how good you are, and all of a sudden you get about 20 seconds into the NHL camp and you’re like, ‘I’m not even close.’ It’s a rude awakening. … You have to remember these prospects have been courted all the way through, and nobody’s ever said, ‘Hey, you’re not that good at this.’
“So instead of saying ‘You’re wonderful — BOOM! — you can’t play,’ we have our development people working with them and saying, ‘You’re getting away with this at that level, but you won’t get away with it at the next level and here’s why.’ But it’s not only the voice. It’s the analytics and the video, and it’s important for us to push the limits of technology.
“The game is changing, it’s always going to change, and you have to use the information to be better.”
(Photos: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
