WHL Prospects Draft Preview: Scout’s Edition (Part 7)
The 2024 WHL Prospects Draft Preview Presented by Windsor Plywood Prince Albert continues with Part 7. Today we go south of the border to learn about another United States scout, Dave Faulkner.
“I’ve been with the Raiders for 13 years. I came in when Dale Derkatch was the head scout, and when Bruno Campese was the General Manager. I live in the Minnesota area, and Bruno Zarrillo calls me the head scout, so I’ve got some guys underneath me. I help out in all areas. I go to the big tournaments in Edmonton. This year I went to Regina for a tournament. Usually I go to Manitoba to their big tournament with all the top Manitoba players. I’ve just kind of helped out in a lot of ways. I think this year I scouted about 180 games, and that’s a low number from what I usually do.”
In the beginning, I scouted for the Regina Pats, the head of player personnel there was Todd Ripplinger. I went to a Doug Wickenheiser golf tournament, and I knew his brothers really well so I’d always go to that tournament. One year, Todd said to me ‘we need a guy down in Minnesota’, so I went down there. It was a chance for me to get back involved in the game, but I was also coaching a lot of peewee and bantam teams, so I was looking at these players anyway.”
Faulker also spent time behind the bench as a coach, where he watched his kids play. But after balancing coaching and scouting, he made the decision to drop his coaching gig to put all his effort into scouting.
“After years of coaching, it was almost impossible to do both. I coached my sons and I continued to coach after that. One of the demands for coaching is you have to run practices every day, and doing that on top of the games got a little too demanding. As you get older, it’s just not easy anymore. So I decided that I wanted to continue scouting, and I stopped coaching.”
When you play the game, the biggest thing about leaving hockey is you miss all the guys, being in the room and having fun. Scouting kind of fills the void, because there are great scouts that I work with that I get to be around.”
Faulkner grew up in Manitoba and played hockey in Winnipeg. His hockey career took a twist, however, when he made the step up to the WHL.
“I grew up in Winnipeg and played my youth hockey there. My best friend, his brother was a scout for the Victoria Cougars, and I had no idea. I was at Brandon Wheat Kings training camp, and Rudy Pilous reached out to me, he was the coach of the Wheat Kings at the time. He was a former NHL coach, he coached the 1961 Stanley Cup winning Chicago Blackhawks, so he had a ring. He talked to me, and I said ‘sure I’d love to come to Brandon’. About a day and a half into the camp, he said ‘you gotta get off the ice’, and I said ‘what did I do wrong sir?’ He said ‘you’re owned by Victoria, and I’m going to get fined if you don’t get out of here!’ I had no idea, I was a 16-year-old at the time.
So I went out to Victoria and I made the team, and had no idea what I was doing. They had a really nice coach there, Mitch Pechet, I really liked him. But we didn’t have a very good team at all, and it wasn’t his fault that we weren’t very good. So they decided to make a coaching change, and the guy that came in, I don’t know. I thought this guy didn’t know what he was doing. He had us skating around the rink and shooting pucks into empty nets. It was just ridiculous, so I quit the team after 49 games and then I was traded to the Regina Pats, which was the best thing that could have happened, because we won the Memorial Cup that year. The next year, I played my 19-year-old year, got drafted by the LA Kings and played about eight or nine years of pro hockey before I decided I had enough.”
Fast forward to his tenure as a scout for the Raiders, and there has been plenty of talent that has come through Prince Albert. Faulkner says one of the guys he was proud to have had a role in was Parker Kelly, but there was another player that he was especially proud of bringing to Hockey Town North.
“There was a kid out of Minnesota by the name of Hunter Warner. He’s a big, strong defenceman. It’s kind of a funny story, I had talked to him and tried to get him to come. He was playing high school hockey and left to play in the USHL for the Waterloo Black Hawks. They weren’t playing him much and I said to him ‘Hunter, you’re not getting much ice time, your draft year is coming up, you need to get ice time.’
They ended up trading him to Fargo, who had an ex-NHL coach. I thought this guy was really going to like Hunter’s game, because he had a tough side to him and he was a big kid. But he wasn’t playing there either. I went home that year, his draft year, and I watched the draft until the last player was picked. I texted him right after that and I said ‘Hunter, I’m sorry to see that you didn’t get drafted this year. I guarantee if you would have come to us you would have been drafted, maybe even in the top three or four rounds.’ He texted me back in less than 30 seconds and said ‘I’ll come.’
He just got back from playing in Europe this season, and I saw him in the rink and he came up to me, shook my hand and kept thanking me for getting him to Prince Albert, because that was the best things that’s ever happened to him.”
For the Parker Kelly’s and Hunter Warner’s out there, Faulkner explained the kind of qualities he looks for when searching for players.
“Our criteria that we’ve always held is that a player needs to be able to skate. He doesn’t have to be a beautiful skater like Mike Modano or Kaiden Guhle, but you want somebody that has good edges and decent speed that can accelerate with or without the puck. That’s number one. Size is a heck of a benefit, but it’s not as important as it used to be. Smaller players are making a big impact in the game. Hockey sense is just as important as skating. The kid has to know what he’s doing with the puck, or when he doesn’t have it. Is he creating space, getting open for passes. Another thing is their compete level. When you’re down two goals, are they just hanging around, not trying that hard, or do they still have that grind to win the game and change the outcome.”
In the summer, it’s nothing but green grass and fairways for Faulkner. He describes what a normal off-season looks like.
“I usually play well over 140 rounds of golf, so I pretty much live and breathe on the golf course. After this phone call, that’s where I’m heading is to the course. I go to Winnipeg for a couple of tournaments, but I live less than a mile away from a course that used to hold a tour stop on the PGA tour. It’s a real nice course, and I’m over there most of the time. We have a real good group about 30 guys that I golf with.”