Scout Goes By The Book Hockey Talent Fuels Dudra’s Drive

Canada in the summertime.

Drive far enough, climb high enough, and a hockey game breaks out.

Ray Dudra has driven 14 hours over two days from his Edmonton home to this pricey mountain resort for the fourth annual Whistler International All-Star Tournament.

It’s an early glimpse at the future.

The top scout of the Spokane Chiefs, Dudra is looking at 14-year-olds, some of whom will surface in next April’s Western Hockey League bantam-age player draft.

Franchises rise and fall on the strength of their drafts. Research starts with a scouting presence in the off-season.

On skates, in uniform, the players look like men, these children born in 1983 who tell you between crooked teeth and braces that they’re here to hang out and have a little fun.

“They probably can’t wait to get the game over so they can go out and run around somewhere,” says Dudra, 53. “They’ll discover girls, cars and stuff, and maybe all of a sudden hockey won’t quite be that important to them. You never know.”

They do know that it’s here and places like it where the game takes a serious turn. They and their parents recognize that as surely as they notice the three middle-aged men seated at one end of the chilly rink.

They are scouts who aren’t here for the scenery.

The temperature in Meadowpark Sports Centre is that of a meat locker. The first of nine games on a July Monday starts at 8 a.m., the last ends that night, after 10. Hot dog and coffee sales are brisk.

Sitting in cold storage as one kid hockey game blurs into another, Ray Dudra scribbles notes and murmurs first impressions, trying to see beyond the obvious with what Chiefs general manager Tim Speltz calls his keen hockey eye.

When a big kid from Redcliff, Alberta, Walter Prawdzick, is left alone to the left of the net, he beats a fiery little goaltender with a shot that goes top shelf.

Dudra reaches for the notebook.

Prawdzick is listed in the tournament program as Walter Drawdzik and is not mentioned at all in the otherwise reliable tournament player guide.

“Prawdzick is about 5-11, 6-foot, 165 to 170 pounds,” Dudra recites from memory, having seen the kid in a tournament the week before. “Big, strong skater. Handles the puck. Goes to the net. Good shot. Basically has all the tools.”

We may never see the name Wally Prawdzick again but for now he’s a prospect. Dudra shares his organization’s enthusiasm for youngsters like Prawdzick, from the Canadian prairies.

“No question, the small-town Saskatchewan and Alberta kids battle harder,” he said. “A lot of them surface from small towns. Maybe it’s pulling the kid off the farm who wants to use hockey as a means to be a player or go to school or whatever.”

Prawdzick’s team - the Cypress Timberwolves - is captained by 5-10 Caleb Macdonald from Kindersley, Saskatchewan. (“Heady player with good puck skills,” Dudra writes. “Like to see him skate better.”)

Prawdzick, Macdonald and another 6-footer, Frank Devine (“Big horse, likes to take the body”) are strong and disciplined but they and their talented prairie teammates are repeatedly turned away at the doorstep by 5-foot-5 goaltender Eric Wilson.

Wilson’s team is an assortment of young stars from the Vancouver, B.C., suburbs.

Mushroom pickers, they’re called by some who question the innate toughness of British Columbia-bred hockey players.

When Wilson is bowled over by the net-rushing, aggressive black-shirted Timberwolves, his stick goes flying and play goes on.

A moment later, when a B.C. player is sent to the penalty box, Wilson, their beleaguered goaltender, angrily tosses his stick in protest. He picks up an unsportsmanlike penalty that puts his team down two players.

Dudra shakes his head.

The Timberwolves quickly score on the 5-3 power play. The scout scribbles another note.

Just as quickly, Wilson regains his composure and slams the door the rest of the way.

“Well, the mushroom pickers beat the prairie kids,” Dudra smiles.

Dudra tries not to let admiration for the sons of Alberta and Saskatchewan color his judgment of British Columbia. He’ll look as hard here, where eight of the nine teams are from the Far West, as any place in Western Canada.

“There are some guys here we’ll follow up on,” he says. “I think these B.C. kids sometimes get a rap they don’t deserve. The bantam-age kids in B.C. are as good, in my opinion, as the bantam-age kids in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

“The tough thing is, they don’t have the type of league (AAA midget) to go to after their bantam year. British Columbia, for whatever reason, has never been able to put together a AAA midget league like Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Those AAA leagues are great for development. It seems to me the prairie kids have more of an avenue to develop.”

A 5-9 forward from Burnaby, B.C., Mark Fulton, caught Dudra’s eye with a great pass to set up a key goal for the winning B.C. team.

The name of another forward from Vancouver about the same size, Ryan Snyder, also went into Dudra’s book. Snyder scored two late goals including the game-winner.

“Strong skater,” Dudra records next to Snyder’s name. “Good stride. Gets involved, takes the body, forechecks well.”

These impressions and pages of others go into a notebook of summer tournaments that Dudra opened the previous week in Edmonton, where he ran across a prospect who’s as close to can’t-miss as he’s seen this month.

Remember the name. Greg Watson, a 6-1, 180-pound center from Calgary. He’ll play in Spokane one day, either for or against the Chiefs.

“I’m not saying he’s going to be the No. 1 guy but from what I saw last week he’ll be up near the top somewhere,” Dudra said.

Dudra has yet to introduce himself to Watson, or any one of these kids.

“Say he’s in the top half-dozen (picks in next spring’s bantam draft),” he said. “As much as I’d like to get on board with him, if we’re picking 12th, there’s no chance. You can’t start bonding with any player because there’s no guarantee you’re going to get him.”

July is the January of Ray Dudra’s year, the first month on the hockey scout’s calender. July began in Edmonton, with a 5-hour side trip to Saskatoon. Dudra spent the first Sunday and Monday of the month here. The next day he was off to Vancouver, 2 hours away, for the Vancouver Superseries, to sit on another cold seat connecting faces with names.

The pace picks up through the fall and winter when all 12 Chiefs scouts are compiling reports.

Only Dudra is fulltime. This - a slew of summer games on the road - is part of the life. He couldn’t be on the road as often as he is without grown children and an understanding wife.

Todd Ripplinger, who scouts for the WHL Kamloops Blazers, is seated a few feet away.

“Ray and I cross paths maybe 15-20 times a year,” Ripplinger said. “When you’re in some of the Godforsaken places we go, when it’s 20 below and you’re stuck in the same building for up to 14 hours, friendships develop. Ray is respected among scouting staffs of other clubs. As witnessed by Spokane’s success the last couple of years, he’s doing a good job.”

So good that he was once courted by the NHL’s San Jose Sharks.

“I went through the (interview) process and they offered me the job (as their Western Canada scout),” he said. “In the end I wasn’t going to take it because I have such a good thing going with the Chiefs. Maybe in time I’ll work with an NHL team but I have input into what happens in Spokane.

“In San Jose I might submit a report and some guy might throw it in the garbage can.”

Dudra came to the Chiefs in 1990 with Speltz, from Medicine Hat, where both worked for the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers. Like any head scout he’s had his disappointments. Injury clouds the clearest foresight.

“The first year (in Spokane) we drafted only four players - Dean Kletzel, Sean Gillam, Randy Favaro and David Lemanowicz,” Dudra said.

All wound up playing in the WHL, Gillam and Lemanowicz as stars, Favaro as a journeyman. Kletzel, the first pick, was haunted by injuries.

“I still say that when we sat down that day, Kletzel was the best player available,” Dudra said. “He’s a great kid who could never stay healthy.”

Still it was a good draft.

Even more impressive was Spokane’s crop of 1979-born players. Three went on to become early picks in last month’s NHL draft - and more importantly to Dudra - seem destined for stardom in the Western Hockey League.

Of the ‘79s, Brad Ference and Ty Jones were first-round NHL selections. Derek Schutz was a third-rounder.

Only a fourth-round pick in the bantam draft, Ference, now 18, was a find. Still, Dudra sticks by his draftday conviction.

“Schutz was our first pick that year,” Dudra said. “In our opinion he was the best player available at that age. I saw Schutz in a bantam tournament in Saskatoon get packed off the ice with an ankle injury. They wrapped it, he came back and didn’t miss a beat. If we had it to do over I’m not sure we’d do it much differently.

“We had no second-round pick that year. We took Jared Smyth and Curtis Suter in the third round. Ference was our first pick of the fourth round.”

Although Ference’s stock has shot past the others in three years, Dudra defends the wisdom of that draft.

“I’m not going to say one (Ference) is better than the other (Schutz) but in terms of the NHL, they see it that way,” he said.

“In Derek’s case, the NHL questions his skating ability, which held him back in terms of being a higher pick. They have some very serious concerns about his skating. He may not be the fastest skater in the world but what they may be overlooking is how he plays the game. Calgary got a heck of a player in the third round. He had some shoulder problems (last season) that others may have chosen not to play through.”

One of the interesting teams here is a mixture of Californians and Russians out of Redwood City, Calif., who call themselves the Polar Black Stars. They toy with a B.C. team in the Monday morning round-robin.

Dudra notices a Russian center named Stas Tchistov.

“He came around the net with the puck and had a look,” the scout says. “Kind of sized up his options. A lot of times you see guys try to get rid of the puck too quickly. He showed some patience and ended up making a good play.”

But the Polar Black Stars attract only passing interest. Aside from falling outside the Chiefs’ primary drawing area, there is something in their style that eats at Dudra’s Canadian hockey sensibilities.

Although “Their skills and abilities are considerably higher than 90 percent of the kids here,” Dudra says, the knock on them is that in the critical next year or two, others who grasp the hard-hitting system Dudra cultivates will step up.

“They don’t like to get hit very much,” the scout said. “When they’re doing all the fancy stuff - putting the puck on their feet and kicking it up - nobody is hitting ‘em. They have the time to look pretty good here.

“Don’t take anything away from them. They’re good players, no doubt about it, but if I’m playing against a guy and he’s giving me a hard time, I’m going to break my stick over his ankle a couple of times and he’s not going to do it again.”

Time and again Dudra sees strong plays that mean nothing to his purposes.

He watches an Eastern Washington team with a Fernie, B.C., goaltender trounce a club from the Fraser Valley and Lower Mainland.

“Kid just made a good play off the wall,” he says, leaning back in his cold bleacher seat as a forward from Wenatchee, Nick Haglund, celebrates a goal. “Took the puck in and scored. Nice play.”

The scout doesn’t write it down.

“Five-foot-five,” Dudra explains.

If Nick Haglund - 5-5, 120 pounds - starts growing in a hurry, Ray Dudra will start writing.

The draft is only nine months away.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 photos (2 color)