Blazers’ head scout Ken Fox preparing for deep bantam draft

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas for Western Hockey League fans. Ken Fox — who oversees the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba as head scout for the Kamloops Blazers — has his own take on the hours leading up to the WHL Bantam Draft. 

“It’s a night before your wedding, maybe? You’re nervous. Have I got all my ducks in a row? It’s a big day tomorrow.” 

Neurons that fire together wire together, as they say. Perhaps that explains the butterflies that Fox, after roughly 25 years of scouting, still experiences leading up to the annual draft. 

Fox spent time as a scout with the Red Deer Rebels, Vancouver Giants, and Swift Current Broncos before landing with the Kamloops Blazers where he is now 12 years into his tenure. Four teams and nearly a quarter-century later, Fox will be marooned at home in Saskatchewan for the first draft of his scouting career.

“This will be the first draft since I started doing it that I won’t be [there in person]. In most cases, you usually get there a couple of nights before the draft and hash over your list. It’s a pretty hard couple of days. You bring it all together, get your booklets all made up the night before and get that done around six or seven o’clock the night before the draft, go get a nice supper and get ready to go to work for the next day.”

The Blazers hold their own 19th overall pick in the draft, followed by the 27th overall selection, courtesy of the Regina Pats. Headlined by Connor Bedard, the 2020 draft has been touted as one of the best in recent memory. Fox — who lives approximately two hours away from two highly-lauded prospects, Riley Heidt and Brayden Yager — is impressed by the depth of talent.

“I think it’s probably as good as it’s been for quite a few years. What I find a bit more this year is it’s a little more right across the board. We’ve had some years where Alberta’s been really good or B.C.’s been really good whereas this year there’s a lot of depth right across Western Canada. That makes for a pretty good draft.”

Evaluating talent demands a keen eye and plenty of communication in order to understand and connect with the players and their families on a personal level. 

“Usually, you make a point of meeting the parents but that wasn’t available to us this year so you have to do that by phone. It’s nice to meet them personally of course; when you meet somebody, you get a little bit of a feel for what they’re thinking, but over the phone, it might be hard to do that.”

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Fox will be conducting his business from Holdfast, Saskatchewan, on Wednesday where he will call into the Blazers’ office on Mark Recchi Way. Matt Bardsley — general manager of the Blazers — and a few staff members will be on the other end. 

“[Bardsley] brought a lot of knowledge over from Portland. He knows his stuff and he’s like the rest of us: he’s pretty passionate, he likes to win. The whole thing, when it comes right down to it, we’re going to bat for our player and we want to win. It takes a really good team effort, that’s for sure.”

Bardsley and the organization have made an effort of acquiring more and more draft capital in recent years. These extra selections mean another kick at the can and that’s music to a scout’s ears.

“It’s funny, when we were making trades and I was talking to Matt, that was the first thing I’d say: ‘I like draft picks’. We’re scouts so of course when you’re trading for a player you have to give draft picks up but I always say ‘we like draft picks’.”

With 10 selections in the first six rounds of this year’s draft, there should be plenty to go around for the Blazers’ scouts, but that’s not necessarily always the case.

“When you put your book together, you go to bat for them hard but you still have to step down. Everybody throws in what they think about the guy and then sometimes you think, ‘they’re probably right, maybe there’s a couple of things that I missed just because I liked him so much,’ so you do have to stand down a little bit.” 

Connor Zary. Photo by Allen Douglas/Kamloops Blazers

It’s not often that a player is so highly coveted and still available later in the draft, but that is what transpired in 2016 when Connor Zary dropped to the Blazers at 37th overall. “Obviously, I really liked him and we liked him as a group too and for him to still be there in the 2nd round was. . . we had some pretty big smiles at our table when he was still there.”

Over the phone or in the flesh, the biggest draw for Fox is the people that encompass the small world of hockey. “The people, that’s the main reason. I love hockey but it’s the people; if you didn’t enjoy being around the people you wouldn’t do it.”