THE LONELINESS OF THE HOCKEY SCOUT

What becomes of hockey players after their playing days? Commenting gigs on TV are in short supply, and coaching and general manager jobs in the N.H.L. are hard to come by, and harder to hold on to. Many become scouts, sitting in rinks, taking notes while watching teenagers who hope to make it as pros.

I’ve spent a lot of time with these scouts. It was never in my plans, but I’ve hung around many of them and even became a one-man human-resources department for a few of them.

Scouts are rarely the former stars but rather those who fell short. Many of them were expected to shine as players, but through either bad luck or bad choices had disappointing careers.

Wayne Gretzky isn’t a scout, but Keith Gretzky was.

Many ex-players wearing an N.H.L. team-issued jacket and evaluating the junior ranks come to see their job as a career for life and even to think they’ll accomplish more in the game as scouts than they did on the ice.

I wasn’t a great player, but I recognize greatness when I see it.

This is a story about one of those scouts, Fred. I tell Fred’s story whenever I overhear a fan talking about scouting as a dream job.

When I first met him, in the early 2000s at the World Junior Championships in Pardubice, in the Czech Republic, his scouting career was off to a promising start. He was in his early 30s, in his first N.H.L. gig.

Though he never played in an N.H.L. game, Fred believed he had found his niche as a scout, and now wanted to get made, to become a part of the fraternity, to have not just a career but a good career, to be a 25-year, maybe a 30-year hockey man.

We got to where we’d call each other up every couple of weeks or so to swap notes. On more than a couple of occasions, we shared rides to games — braving icy two-lane highways on the banks of the St. Lawrence going into the small-town Quebec. We became friends.

Fred was a good scout, industrious, conscientious, always looking for a certain type of player, like he had a favorite flavor. If you didn’t know better, you’d assume that Fred and others like him recognize their own weaknesses in young players and know to stay away. For example, one former high N.H.L. draft pick was a highly skilled, athletic goalie who had a bad work ethic and a worse attitude — but when he scouts goalies he tends to look for character first and is willing to overlook physical shortcomings. Likewise, Fred focused on big, athletic kids — a short, pudgy kid, no matter how skilled he might be, was the first name crossed off Fred’s list.

One spring, Fred’s team won the Stanley Cup, a three-foot-high piece of silverware. In one of the N.H.L.’s quaintest rituals, players and staff members of the championship team get a day with the Cup in the following summer, a chance to take the grail home to show friends and family. Fred booked his “day with Stanley” in August. He invited me to the block party, but I had to beg off because of a work assignment. I told him his team looked strong enough to win the Cup again, and I’d make it then.

A couple of summers after that Fred called. His team didn’t win the Cup that spring, and there’d been changes at the executive level. The general manager who had hired him was being ousted. His scouting director, whom he called his “best friend,” had taken a job with another organization.

“I’m out,” he said. “I have a year to run on my contract. Can you help me with my résumé?”

I had worked on the résumés of a couple of scouts who had been cut loose by management, and both found new jobs. I thought Fred had a good shot. He had more than 10 years on the job, and his fingerprints were all over a team that won the Stanley Cup. He had networked from Day 1. And he was sure that his former scouting director would have something for him next year. That was his fallback.

“Something will open next July 1,” he said, that being the date when management tenders scouts’ contracts.

Fred’s plan in the interim: He was going to go about his work as if he were still employed by his club. He would travel to the arenas across Canada and the United States on his own dime and write up reports so that he could be seen by others in the business and so that he’d be up to speed on young prospects for those job interviews the next spring.

Fred did all that and more for eight months. We traveled together a couple of times. By spring I could tell his confidence was eroding.

He sent out résumés to 29 N.H.L. clubs. He made follow-up calls. He called in favors. He didn’t get a single interview. His former scouting director, Fred’s last, best hope, didn’t return calls or emails, not even when he was overhauling his staff. Friendship, Fred realized, counts for nothing more in hockey than it does in any other business.

Since then, he’s had a couple of junior-level jobs in minor hockey, well below the pay grade and professional status of a guy who has a Stanley Cup ring. On Jan. 1 he woke up in his own bed, had breakfast with his wife and kicked around the house all day. He’d have been in no mood to watch the world-junior tournament over the holidays. For an N.H.L. scout, there’s really no place like away from home.

I thought about Fred this year at the world juniors. I was able to stay off the road for half the tournament — the opening round was being played in Toronto, my hometown.

I had always thought I understood the scouts’ lives, but I didn’t until it went sideways for Fred, until his job slipped away and he hung on so desperately to hope, until I saw him sitting at games writing reports that no one would read.

Only then did I realize how much scouting meant to him. He had poured his life into hockey, and it was taken away from him twice. Fred locked away his Stanley Cup ring. Wearing it wouldn’t bring back memories of a championship so much as remind him of the work he loved and the job he lost.

I’ve seen other scouts dropped by clubs, sometimes after 10 or even 20 years on a staff, and they too were unable to stay away from the arenas. Almost all of them landed something, if not right away then down the line. Fred’s pain was plain. I worried for him, not just professionally but at a much deeper level. Still do.