Hockey scouts spanning 80 years to be inducted to 'Wall of Honour' in Okotoks

A hockey stick surrounded by pucks. (Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels)

Hockey royalty will descend on southern Alberta on Tuesday to honour legendary scouts over the past 80 years.

The Western Canada Professional Hockey Scouts Foundation (WCPHSF) will be inducting 45 past and present scouts into its newly unveiled Wall of Honour at its inaugural banquet at the Foothills Centennial Centre in Okotoks.

“We were starting to lose some of the older guys and there hasn’t really been much in hockey about honouring scouts in the past,” Erin Ginnell, the president of the WCPHSF, said in an interview with CTV News.

“We thought we would put something together and do a wall of honour.”

The nearby Okotoks Centennial Arena will be home to the wall, featuring a display with three video screens, to be unveiled on Tuesday afternoon.

Ginnell said the foundation looked at a few different cities to host the wall of honour, but the Okotoks Oilers and the City of Okotoks really stepped up to help get the event going.

“We can’t thank the City of Okotoks enough for getting on board early and helping us,” he said.

“We are a bunch of scouts, we’ve never done this before, so it was good to have some expertise in there to really help us along the way.”

The inductees will include five “pioneers” spanning from 1940-1963, 17 from scouting’s early era in 1963-79, 20 from the modern era and two from junior hockey.

Spending lots of time on the road, Ginnell said hockey scouts often form a comradery.

“I think that’s how the relationships start and a lot of them are life-long,” he said.

“Even though we’re on different teams, we travel a lot, we see each other a lot in hotels, on flights, on the road.”

The WCPHSF will also present the inaugural Ace Award, honouring inductee Garnet (Ace) Bailey, who was the Los Angeles Kings’ director of pro scouting when he died aboard a plane that crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

“We’ve made a trophy in his honour to basically give it to somebody who’s really helped the scouting community,” Ginnell said.

“He was such a great guy and (its) a real good to honour a person like that.”

A gala will begin in the afternoon, followed by dinner in the banquet hall.

The event will feature hot stove sessions with Ken Holland, former Edmonton Oilers president and general manager; John Davidson, the president of the Columbus Blue Jackets; and Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser, a practising physician, former Olympic gold medallist and assistant GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

There will also be live and silent auctions for hockey memorabilia, including autographed NHL player jerseys.