frontenacs' head scout aaron van leusen on the lookout for a player like him
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kingston frontenacs head scout aaron van leusen, left, and general manager kory cooper at the draft table at the delta hotel by marriott kingston waterfront as frontenacs management prepares for the ontario hockey league priority selection on friday, april 21, 2023.
ian macalpine
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the whig-standard
when asked about the player in question, dave gray offered up a glowing thumbnail profile. these days, gray is the sudbury wolves’ personnel director, but back in 1998 he was working for the brampton battalion, a first-year expansion franchise.
“he was the 10th-round pick in the 1998 ohl [priority selection] and most 10th-rounders don’t make or have much of an impact,” gray said. “but with a lot of hard work and commitment and belief, he made himself into a very good player in the league, a 20-goal scorer on the wing, a key part of one of the best penalty-killing units in the league — played very hard, smart and always put his teammates first. he wound up being a four-year player with the team and he was doing that with a new organization, not with the support of a lot of established talent. very mature, no entitlement, no cockiness. all credit to him.”
the player in question, aaron van leusen, did no. 196 overall, but played in the league as a 16-year-old, at least in part because the battalion had to scramble to fill out a roster. still, van leusen wound up becoming a fourth-round draft pick of the detroit red wings back in 2000, but after three trips to training camp and skates with hockey hall of famers, he didn’t make the show, his progress stalled because of injury. he wound up at saint mary’s university where he earned a degree in criminology, an exclamation point on his reputation for serious-mindedness.
van leusen has worked as a scout for the kingston frontenacs 15 years, balancing his day job in law enforcement. in his rookie season, the team selected sam bennett in the first round, so it turned out he filed dozens of reports on a player destined to be a conn smythe winner. “that was in the ’96 birth-year class and you had mcdavid as an exceptional player as well,” van leusen said,
the frontenacs promoted van leusen to the head of the scouting department six years ago. effectively, his job is to find players in his own mould — those who can be counted on to show up, to put in the work and not cause headaches.
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now more than ever, they’re hard to come by. that might sound counter-intuitive — it seems like there are more talented teenagers than ever, all kinds of fertile new territories turning out prospects. however, ability checks off only one box on the list of desired qualities. these days a kid who wants to be a contributor to your major-junior team, who is committed to a program for the long haul and not just the next game.
a player in this profile is more elusive than ever — even one you’d consider a sure thing might prove illusory. drawn from the frontenacs’ recent files and submitted into evidence on this last count: vann williamson, the defenceman elevated to captain in january with the vowed intention that he’d return for his overage year in the leadership role; and as of this autumn a freshman on the campus of clarkson, the ncaa school in potsdam, n.y.
on the whim of a u.s. college coach with a scholarship to spare and an impulse to shop, all the work a canadian hockey league gm does to piece together a winning roster can blow up when the ink dries on a letter of commitment, like the one that porter martone signed when he left the brampton steelheads for michigan state last year.
mind you, not that the players hold all the cards — they’re finding out that a school’s word isn’t entirely bankable either. frontenacs forwards landon wright and matthew frost had commitments to maine and boston college respectively and planned on arriving on campus this fall, but evidently the hockey programs have advised them to sit tight for another season.
given the paradigm shift with the u.s. college ranks and major junior, it’s effectively like william goldman’s hollywood: “nobody knows anything. “nobody knows anything. not one person … knows for a certainty what’s going to work. every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
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to this end, van leusen said he and his staff do their homework. “our staff get out there and see the games and evaluate the talent for the baseline, but at the same time we have to take the pulse,” he said. “you get to know the coaches and the families and agents or representation. we have to trust and have faith in our scouts to deliver the information (about signability and intentions). but like a lot of things in scouting — figuring out who’s likely to have a growth spurt, whose got room for development in their game — it’s an inexact science.”
with the nobody-knows-anything proposition in play, it’s a guess and events likely ride on who is whispering what into a player’s or parent’s ear.
of course, nobody can know exactly how this draft will play out when the frontenacs’ first-rounder in the ohl priority selection in two weeks. with the 10th pick overall, too many variables are in play. one thing is certain, however: whoever kingston general manager kory cooper taps, van leusen will have seen him play, live and often.
by his estimate, van leusen took in 400 games in the 2024-25 season and between 30 and 40 times he was in the stands for games featuring the frontenacs’ first pick in last year’s priority selection, aleks kulemin. even with later picks, the scout believes he had comprehensive coverage — van leusen saw kingston’s seventh-rounder nolan snyder, a pittsburgh native, play in the penguins u16 team or in showcases.
the pressure is on scouting staffs to make the first-rounders count and that certainly seems to be the case with kulemin. still, making a seventh-round pay off like snyder did is what the crew can dine out on — snyder’s 16 goals as a 16-year-old after being selected no. 158 outstripped the ohl’s first overall, peterborough’s centre kaden mcgregor seven goals in 39 games.
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then again, that’s not quite up there with a kid at no. 196 in the ohl draft becoming an nhl fourth-rounder for a club that drafted as smartly as the red wings back in the day.
you have to believe van leusen will have a pretty clear read not just of a kid’s talent, but also whether the kid means it if he says he wants to play four years for the frontenacs.
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