HD2 Sports, the Future of Hockey Scouting and Recruiting

Posted by Dan in Other Stuff

There are 1,444,660 ice hockey players world-wide according to the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), and it is impossible for the scouts and recruiters to see them all. So former player Dave Bénard took it upon himself to come up with an innovative way to get athletes noticed, and the scouts don’t even need to leave the comfort of their own home. He founded HD2 Sports (formerly Athletes In-Digital Ltd.) in January of 2003, after numerous conversations with players and past teammates who found themselves frustrated by a recruitment process that left them unnoticed.

Bénard knows the game, and what it takes to be successful, as he spent seven years playing competitive hockey at the CIAU, WHL, BCHL, and RMJHL levels. Since establishing HD2 Sports, Bénard and associate Mark Loewen have completed profiles for thousands of athletes from across Western Canada, numerous of which have gone on to be drafted or garnered scholarship opportunities. The video quality is top notch, and costs are effectively low, meaning much of the reward that Bénard and Loewen recieve is by seeing the players they’ve profiled go on to bigger and better things in their hockey careers.

With the evolution of the game of hockey, the scouting process is evolving as well, and HD2 Sports is at the forefront when it comes to improving the potential of exposure for young players by using their groundbreaking, truly original media approach. Bénard believes that video analysis is the future of scouting, and with the quality of HD2 Sports productions you’d have to agree. Let’s face it, if Justin Bieber can become the biggest thing in the music industry after being discovered on YouTube, there is no reason a collection of video highlights can’t promote a players worth enough to spark interest from the NCAA and Major Junior leagues. And, in the digital world in which we live, it makes a lot of sense and keeps travel costs down for clubs looking to recruit players. Bénard is also currently in the process of becoming a distributor of some amazing performance analysis software as well, something that looks to make a scouts job even that much easier while being more efficient.

For more on HD2 Sports, or contact information, check out their website at http://www.hd2.ca/home.html

Matt Dumba, Red Deer Rebels first round pick, 4th overall, in the 2009 WHL Bantam Draft