Former Vancouver Canucks director of amateur scouting Judd Brackett didn’t stay unemployed for long.
The Minnesota Wild have scooped up the Massachusetts-based scout, nine days after his contract with the Canucks officially expired.
The Wild, who the Canucks are preparing to face in next month’s Stanley Cup playoffs qualifying round, announced Thursday that Brackett will lead the NHL team’s amateur scouting department.
He’ll get to put his reputation to the test right off the bat, as the Wild have three picks in the first 45 of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, which is expected to take place sometime in October. He’s known to be a scout who places a lot of value on a player’s character and desire on top of their obvious skill sets.
Brackett’s work in Vancouver was very well regarded in scouting circles. He was promoted to director of amateur scouting in 2015, after Eric Crawford was fired and Canucks then-president Trevor Linden and general manager Jim Benning began to reshuffle their scouting department.
He had been working for the Canucks as a United States Hockey League-focused scout since 2008. A former collegiate goalie, he’d previously worked for the Indiana Ice of the USHL and the Gatineau Olympiques of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Brackett was the scout who lobbied for Adam Gaudette in 2015, for instance.
Once he was put in charge of amateur scouting, his work drew the notice of Linden and by the 2017 draft, Brackett’s voice had become very influential in how the team built their draft list.
Canucks’ drafts in 2017, 2018 and 2019, under Linden and Benning, are considered to be very strong and many in the industry pointed to the standards Brackett and his top lieutenants had put in place, collecting information in a coherent fashion and getting as many views in on players as possible.
But after Linden left the club in 2018, Brackett and Benning grew more at odds over the team’s scouting approach, to the point where this season Brackett was offered a two-year extension by Benning but without guarantees over his role, especially in how he could direct scouts and staff his department.
In the end, Brackett didn’t sign the extension and Benning announced in late May that Brackett wouldn’t be returning. The two essentially hadn’t spoken for months at that point.
Benning, whose scouting reputation was a big factor in his original hiring in 2014, indicated after it was announced that Brackett would be leaving that he saw himself taking on more duties in directing the department.
It is expected assistant general manager John Weisbrod’s voice will grow in influence as well. Weisbrod was very involved in building the draft list for the 2016 draft and has long been a key advisor to Benning. The two first worked together for the Boston Bruins, where Weisbrod was the director of collegiate scouting and Benning was the assistant general manager.
Also, Ron Delorme, who ran the Canucks’ scouting operations from 2000 to 2012 before being reassigned back to scouting the WHL by Mike Gillis, seems likely to regain prominence in the Canucks’ drafting focus.
Delorme’s voice is one that Benning is also understood to appreciate — the GM’s highlighting of Delorme’s voice in the decision to draft Elias Pettersson was notable, given that Delorme was really just one of a chorus who were calling for ‘The Alien’ to be drafted. Delorme and Todd Harvey, who has been scouting for just two years, are currently assigned a “cross-checker” role, a scout who moves beyond their assigned territory to give alternative looks on players.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
