The scouts stood. The minute you write, something happens. All around them were rivals, scouting for other organizations, and agents, scouting for themselves. When you think of scouts, you might think of the baseball birddog, who shows up at a game, finds a jewel or two and goes home happy. That's not the way it works, at least not here.
Every scout rates every player.
If a kid's not good, you want to make sure he's not good. NHL teams don't draft to fill holes, as NBA and NFL teams do, because the vast majority of prospects takes years to develop. Teams like to draft a variety of players for balance, but mostly they just take the best player available when it's their turn. So with the help of the computer program, the Wings constantly update lists of who they think the best players are by region and league. When the final buzzer sounded, the scouts rushed out of the rink to beat the crowd.