Jets scout doesn’t need planes, trains or automobiles

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/12/2020 (1759 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jimmy Roy’s well-worn passport is gathering plenty of dust these days.

Oh sure, the Winnipeg Jets’ director of player development is still taking work trips across the globe. But he’s doing it with Zoom conferences, and telephone calls and texts, and by watching often grainy video feeds of hockey games happening in far-off places he can’t get to owing to the pandemic.

Take Wednesday for example. When I touched base with Roy early in the afternoon, he was in the middle of dissecting Jets prospect Simon Lundmark’s most recent game with Linkopings HC of the Swedish Hockey League. That came after back-to-back viewings of another young draft pick, Austin Wong, who is skating with the Fargo Force of the United States Hockey League after his NCAA season at Harvard was scrapped. 

“Happy to give my eyes a bit of a break here. I’ve been staring at the screen for a while,” the 45-year-old former Manitoba Moose star told me. 

While not ideal, at least there was no long line at security or customs for Roy to worry about, no cramped middle seat for one of the countless long international flights he takes in at typical season. The pride of Sioux Lookout, Ont., is doing it all from the comfort of the southern California home he shares with wife Laura and their three daughters. 

“I haven’t gone anywhere in the nine months since we first shut down,” said Roy. “In some ways, I think it’s been better, the communication. I think there’s a lot more communication happening with players. You just have more time. You’re not on planes, booking hotels, travelling from city to city. In ways it’s easier. But, of course, you don’t have that personal face time with players, the contact with them in the arena right after a game where you can build relationships.”

Relationship-building is pretty much Roy’s job description, as he and Mike Keane are tasked with keeping close tabs on all the young players in the prospect pool. Roy handles more of the European and U.S. college side of things, while Keane (based out of Winnipeg) is more hands-on with those playing at the American Hockey League level. 

It’s an important role in any professional sports organization but especially so for a team like the Jets, which puts a premium on drafting and developing. And Roy, like so many of us these days, has had to find new ways of doing his job.

For example, there was no traditional summer camp this year, which is the annual week-long event where new draft picks join other young hopefuls for a crash course, on and off the ice, into all things Jets.

This time, Roy and Keane did it virtually once the NHL draft was completed in early October, discussing some of the usual topics such as nutrition, fitness planning and media training with the class of 2020, including 10th-overall pick Cole Perfetti, who is currenty vying for a spot on Canada’s world junior team at training camp in Red Deer, Alta. 

“It sucks I can’t go there right now and get to know him face to face. That’s the tough part with the new kids we have,” he said. 

Managing expectations, and emotions, is another key part of Roy’s day-to-day work, and that has gotten more difficult with all the uncertainty swirling in the sports world and the real world. 

Some of these prospects don’t have a place to play, with leagues such as the WHL, OHL, QMJHL, AHL and ECHL not currently operating in North America. Others have been loaned to teams in North America and beyond, in an attempt to find them a temporary hockey home. 

“Helping kids understand the new norm as far as training, as far as what you can do to help yourself, we talk to them and tell them you can look at this in one of two ways. Either you had this extra time, did you take advantage of it? Or not? There are players on both sides, ones who have trouble staying motivated if they’re not playing hockey,” said Roy. 

“But then you have players who are like, OK, this is an opportunity for me to get in better shape, to get quicker feet, to work on my physical strength, to get my nutrition under control, to work on my faceoffs, things like that. Managing those personalities and those kids, that’s what we’re there for.”

Even if Roy is not really there, at least in the physical sense. 

“The games you watch on tape, it’s not the same. You can’t see everything. What his skating is like, what his puck skills are like, what’s happening behind the play? Some of the cameras aren’t great, there are bad angles. But in today’s game it’s what we have to work with,” he said. 

COVID-19 has impacted Roy’s professional life but also his personal one. One of Roy’s daughters was stricken with the virus earlier this year, and there was added concern because she has epilepsy. 

“We had to isolate her for two weeks. It was the weirdest thing. She picked it up, we don’t know where or how. We were following all the guidelines. And nobody else (in the family) got it. She got pretty sick there for a while, we had to give her steroids and other strong meds. But everybody’s great now,” he said

When I spoke with Moose head coach Pascal Vincent a couple weeks back, he praised the job Roy and Keane have been doing. Exhibit A would be the recent success of Jansen Harkins, a 2015 draft pick who took the longer road to the NHL, including a detour through the ECHL.

“That part of it is pretty gratifying. That’s why Mike and I love our jobs. We get to see kids have success. But a guy like Jansen, 110 per cent of that credit has to go to Jansen. He’s a kid who put in the work. He’s a great kid, very smart, very driven. And there’s lots of players like that that are coming, I think, in the fold, that are very driven and want to play in the National Hockey League and are probably going to get opportunities,” said Roy. 

“We use that example all the time, not just with other players but ourselves. I was a guy who was drafted and never played a game in the NHL. Mike’s a guy never drafted and went on to win three Stanley Cups. It’s not about where you’re drafted. It has to do with how much work you put in, your willingness to learn.”

And, as 2020 has shown everyone, it’s about the ability to adapt. Which is why technology will continue to be Roy’s tour guide, his passport safely stowed away for the foreseeable future. 

 

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg