Everyone has their hobbies. Whether it’s golf, basketball, crocheting, hiking, woodworking, or underwater basket weaving, everyone has an outlet.

For years, I have been watching and scouting hockey.

I fell in love with the NHL Draft on September 29, 2006. I was in college in Pittsburgh, the Sabres were coming off their 2005-06 playoff run, and a group of us from Buffalo went down to Mellon Arena to watch a preseason game against the Penguins. Buffalo’s first-round pick from the 2005 draft, Marek Zagrapan, was in the lineup.

During the second intermission, I looked at my friends and loudly proclaimed there was no chance this guy was ever going to play in the NHL. Then I doubled down by confidently announcing that I could run the draft better than the Sabres scouting staff.

So a cocky 20-year-old who had never played organized hockey decided that’s exactly what he was going to try to do.

It started as nothing more than a hobby. I’d study old draft classes, drive to OHL rinks whenever I happened to be in town, and convince myself I knew more than NHL scouting departments. By 2010, Facebook had become my personal scouting opinion platform where I passionately explained why the Sabres had just passed on the next superstar, Emerson Etem.

Whoops. Missed on that one.

By 2012, I was spending my free time arguing on any blog forum I could find that the Sabres should trade Derek Roy for the opportunity to draft Alex Galchenyuk. I was devastated when Filip Forsberg went one pick before Mikhail Grigorenko, couldn’t believe Justin Kea was a third-round pick, and just kept watching more games, reading more reports, and talking hockey with anyone willing to listen.

Then in 2015, I found Die By the Blade.

Chad allowed me to join the writing staff, and suddenly, this weird hobby had turned into something I felt I had a genuine responsibility to be good at if people were going to read what I wrote. For years, I posted my rankings, paid ridiculous streaming fees to watch every league imaginable, and published my annual “who the Sabres should draft” articles until I eventually ran out of players I had actually watched.

In 2021, I joined Smaht Scouting.

For the past five years, Smaht has been home. It allowed me to write player profiles and scouting reports, and to continue learning alongside some incredibly talented people. Sadly, on July 1, Smaht closed its doors. An immense thank you to it’s founder, Josh Tessler, for the opportunity to be a part of something that became so foundational to creating my scouting and hockey perspective.

Instead of looking for another place to write, I found myself right back where I think I belong, starting my own scouting site, working alongside Chad again, and bringing something to the public scouting community that I don’t think it has.

I don’t just want to publish rankings. I want to write through the process of scouting.

I want you to see how my opinions evolve throughout the season. I want you to know why a player climbs my board, why another falls, and what changed between September and June. I’ll undoubtedly be wrong about players. Every scout is. The interesting part isn’t pretending otherwise. It’s understanding why you were wrong and learning from it.

Along the way, I also want to chase the questions that constantly bounce around my brain.

Why does it feel like NHL teams throw their hands in the air during the middle rounds and draft every 6’3″ skater who doesn’t produce but “has tools”? Why did so many NCAA draft eligibles seem to get punished for playing against better competition than their CHL and USHL counterparts? Why do so many players explode offensively after leaving the USHL for the CHL? And seriously…what are people actually talking about when they say a prospect can or can’t play center? I know what I look for in centers, but I’m not convinced everyone else is using the same criteria anymore.

Those are some of the conversations I want this site to have.

The plan is to publish two free articles every week. One will be a notebook covering the players I’ve watched that week and the questions I have after a week of watching hockey. The other will be a deeper dive into a player, a trend, or a topic that’s caught my attention. I’ll publish an initial, mid-year, and end-of-year rankings for free as well.

For those who want to dive even deeper, paid subscribers will get access to my game notes, tracking data, Discord community, the most up-to-date rankings and eventually a draft guide that includes my full rankings and what I would do if I were sitting in each NHL team’s draft room.

We’ll kick things off this summer by taking an early look at some of the top point producers eligible for the 2027 NHL Draft through a Summer Scouting series.

Twenty years after I first started down this rabbit hole, my goal has changed quite a bit. When I was younger, I secretly hoped an NHL team would stumble across my work and think, “We should bring this guy onto our scouting staff.”

I don’t really care about that anymore.

What I care about is making the NHL Draft and player development accessible to the most casual hockey fan. I want people to fall in love with the draft the same way I did. I want someone who has never heard of the MHL, the USHL, or HockeyAllsvenskan to realize there’s an entire hockey world worth exploring long before a player ever reaches the NHL.

More than anything, though, I hope this site inspires the next generation of draft nerds.

I hope some 20-year-old reads one of my articles, watches that prospect once, becomes convinced they’ve found the next superstar, and jumps on whatever social media they use to passionately argue that their favorite team should trade its best player so it can draft Sergei Skvortsov.

Nothing would make me happier.