The NHL Central Scouting Preliminary Rankings were released yesterday, and there were a few players listed who have been suspiciously absent from The Scouting News pages over the years. How is it that a service which claims to know everything worth knowing about competitive youth hockey could perennially overlook any player good enough to be considered for the NHL draft by Central Scouting itself? The answers are easy: 1) The Scouting News is not remotely related to any legitimate scouting or ranking organization; 2) The Scouting News purposely and systematically attempts to blacklist players whose parents have had disagreements with The Scouting News in the past.
No reputable scouting organization is perfect and depending on how deep you look, no two of them produce exactly the same ranking list. These organizations may agree on the top 10, 25 or 30 players in a given year, but beyond that there is a lot of movement. It’s one thing to leave a player off because you honestly don’t think he has the right stuff, but when every other leading (ie. legitimate) scout has a player ranked high enough to be drafted by the NHL and he’s missing from your list, well… let’s just say you’ve got a chip on your shoulder that completely undermines your integrity and credibility
Think about it, friends. You’ve seen all of the claims the News makes about its predictions. They scream about the accuracy and track record of knowing who will make it to the next level. Every year they swindle more impressionable young families into paying to view what they think will be objective or flattering articles about their player. What they get is poorly worded, mispelled compilations of self-promotion submitted by players and parents themselves or gleaned and rehashed from myriad other web sites. If that’s all there were to it, however, this Boycott would not exist. If they want to peddle a poor product and people want to pay for it, we’d say “caveat emptor” and leave it at that. The Scouting News crosses the line by aggressively marginalizing players of parents who so much as question their content. By subscribing to The Scouting News, you are tacitly funding the attempted blacklisting of parents and the isolation of their innocent children from a game they love. Is your ego really so enormous that it must be fed by a publication utterly lacking in integrity regardless of the cost to others?
Hockey is a team sport; which team are you on? Join the Boycott! Don’t give another cent to the Scouting Nazi, don’t renew your subscription, and don’t send them any stories or pictures of your children. Until they post an apology to all hockey parents admitting their practice of blacklisting and marginalization, this Boycott will continue.
Boycott The Scouting News 
I fully support the Boycott, however, some things should cause us to pause and take a step back from our differences. This week, The Scouting News is grieving the loss of Aksel Jensen, father of one of their chief scouting analysts, Darren Jensen. I agreed to support this Boycott because it’s focus was not on the content that is published or on any of the fine people like Mr. Jensen which have been associated with it. I support the Boycott only because there is one person who has been allowed to run amok without intervention. This week, however, I think we ought to think about winding down the rhetoric and putting this whole thing to bed- especially in consideration of the name of all of the good people like Mr. Jensen who have done nothing wrong other than overlooking or misbehavior of one employee. I don’t think there’s any organization around that can say it hasn’t made a single mistake. I think the Boycott has to continue on the terms as stated, however, I really think we need to separate the Boycott of a practice (like marginalizing kids) from an appreciation of people who do the right things like Mr. Jensen. I offer my sincere condolences to the Jensen family and their friends at this time of loss.
Comment by Ron — November 21, 2009 @ 12:02 am |
I agree this publication is complete nonsense. I know first hand how often my son or I get email requests to submit details on him as a player (probably 20 in the last year). Unfortunately I did get sucked into purchasing a subscription a couple years back, something I have regretted, although reading the player articles is a form of entertainment. I refuse to write articles on my own son and then read them. I know what kind of player he is, and believe me, the legitimate scouts and decision makers do as well. How can the scouting news claim to be legitimate when they make numerous requests for players to join some “scouting man” service, their latest money grab. The last request we received was a few days ago, when it clearly stated in the email, this is your last chance to submit information on your player or he will be removed from our scouting lists for good. Think about that for a moment and understand how ridiculous a comment that is. You pay a fee and your player gets publicized or ranked, you don’t pay and he gets dropped from their list. Interesting that this deadline came just before they released their January 2010 WHL list. I can’t wait until the draft takes place this spring.
Comment by Anonymous — January 12, 2010 @ 2:45 pm |
Thanks for joining the Boycott. Your experience is exactly why we’re keeping it going. Some people think this blog was built by one person who had a uniquely unfortunate experience. The fact is that The Scouting News continues its deplorable exploitation of parents and their children. No matter how much you like seeing your son’s name on the internet, be forewarned, you are tacitly supporting exploitation if you give these people one red cent.
Comment by thescoutingnazi — January 22, 2010 @ 8:51 pm
Screw that. Sorry about the Jensen loss, but this is about people that continue to use false pretenses representing themselves as professional scouts who have power to make or break players and they are none of that. I say f’em.
Comment by thescoutingnazi — January 22, 2010 @ 9:16 pm |
Nothing wrong with separating the two, however my son was grieving the loss of a grandfather, and that did not stop the “one person” to continue to demand a subscription.
Comment by Jeff — December 13, 2009 @ 5:07 pm |
There plagerism is actually pretty bad. One site gets hit by them non stop, they take things almost word for word.
I wish that they would be above board with everything, instead of making it all seem like it’s a massive enterprise.
Comment by James — December 17, 2009 @ 9:00 pm |
http://www.bbscouting.com/
Looks like they are now Basketball experts too
Comment by Jeff — February 8, 2010 @ 11:22 pm |
Wow, The Scouting News are such experts in hockey they’ve decided to scam basketball parents, too. The word is out and hockey parents are starting to wise up. Quick, let all the football and soccer families know, too before these crooks get a foothold in other sports. Now that the lights are one the cockroaches are scattering everywhere.
Comment by thescoutingnazi — March 9, 2010 @ 10:06 pm |
Today during a lunch break my phone rang and it said BC private number an I answered the phone and mr. Darren Jensen starts talking to me about some spring program, I just told him he was a good goalie and hung up he phoned me thirty minutes later and called me Widum even though my names Willem and asked me to pay a 100$ to go to some bullshit program. I asked him how he got my number and he just hanged up
Comment by Ersberg fan — April 23, 2010 @ 12:19 am |
same ^^, i got a call on my lunch break with darren jensen saying i had 2 days to sign up… blah blah blah, we look forward to working with you and all that BS, nice try.
Comment by hockeyhockey — September 21, 2010 @ 12:05 pm |
You guys crack me up , so basically because some players didn’t make his list , your going to do this.
Bottem line is if my kid is good enough he may or may
Not be found , if I can do something to help my kid
Maybe to that next level then great I’m all for it.
Hard work dedication and good parents is key , you can
Have a great player but if the parents are “fill in _______here” then it won’t matter. A couple kids I know that my son has/does play hockey with have been noticed
And one is going in the 1st round of the ohl draft. Did the
Scouting news have anything to do with it who knows but
It didn’t hurt that player by any means. Best of luck.
Comment by ?!?! — January 25, 2011 @ 4:06 pm |
Amazing that you could arrive at such a conclusion after having read the post. You didn’t really read it did you? This Boycott is not and has never been about what the Scouting News prints. It is about an “adult” who takes money from parents to let them view what they or their children have written and who actually calls their coaches if they complain. That’s right – he calls their coach & makes up stories (lies) about the parents and (here’s the really incredible part) he tries to influence the coaches to black list these kids! That’s honest to God what’s happening with this Benny character. So if you give them money to see something you or your kid wrote published on their web site, you’re either a poorly informed overly proud parent or you’re a complete tool for financing that kind of evil. If you paid me $200, I’d be happy to write something nice about your kid and let you read it – but I wouldn’t dream of harming a child in any way because of something an adult did or said that offended me. That’s where we draw the line.
Comment by The Scouting Nazi — January 26, 2011 @ 4:24 am |
Well – it looks as this should have stopped by now but it has not. I had a previous (couple years back) confrontation with this group about the automatic billing and never finding the articles or getting the access to the page… It took several phone calls and threats to get them to stop harrassing myself and my boys and also to stop charging me for something I had not way of even requesting the billing to stop! It was a crazy time then recently as 2 months ago my parents that live two provinces away from my son started getting email addressed to him stating the same old story of how they wanted to set up an interview and have him answer some questions. They claimed to be the be all end all of scouting but they do not even know who my son is playing for and where he currently stands in the upcoming NHL draft ranking from legitimate sources. They have asked the he supply all the information (who he plays for, his stats, his strenths & weaknesses) etc. so they can look like they have legitimately scouted him… I cant believe after all these years that these guys have not been shut down! They are parisites in the worst way and they need to be stopped!
Comment by Anonymous — March 7, 2012 @ 1:41 pm |
Glad to hear your son is doing well in spite these charlatans. Stories like yours help parents and players more than you know. Thanks for sharing your story with everyone and good luck to your son.
Comment by The Scouting Nazi — March 7, 2012 @ 1:54 pm |