The coach of the Okotoks Junior A Oilers will be home for Christmas, but after the holidays he’ll likely be seeing hockey in his dreams.

Garry VanHereweghe will be watching more hockey than TSN analyst Pierre Maguire on a road trip when the Oilers’ head coach heads to the Mac’s Midget AAA hockey tournament Dec. 26 to Jan. 1 in Calgary to scout players.

Okotoks Oilers Garry VanHereweghe will be scouting for future players at the Mac's Major Midget tournament Dec 26-Jan. 1.

“I will spend a full week there,” VanHereweghe said.  “I will not only be watching, but trying to talk to some of the Midget players to find out what are there future goals.”

The Oilers have a number of Midget players, who have indicated they wish to play with the Oilers, who will be playing at the Mac’s tournament with their respective teams. VanHereweghe and other team scouts will keep a close eye on those players.

“We need to start facing decisions on where we see them on the depth chart and discuss things that the players have to work on to make it to the next level,” VanHereweghe said.

The Mac’s is one of the biggest Midget tournaments in the world and several players could be prospective Junior A players. Okotoks scouts will be looking for players who can fit the mold of wearing the Oilers’ black-and-green in the future.

When you’re scouting, you watch a game a lot different than John B. Fan who has a hot dog in one hand, a pop in the other and just focuses on the puck.

“If I am watching a game where I don’t know any players I will watch one team for one period and identify guys I might be interested in,” VanHereweghe said. “Then I will do the same thing for the other team in the second period. In the third period, I will be watching those guys who caught my eye.”

Between games, periods, and maybe even shifts, the team of Okotoks Oilers scouts will meet and discuss the pros and cons of prospective players like they were a group of youngsters discussing the best toys at Monkey Mountain Toys deciding what is actually good and not just glitter.

Although there will be more scouts at the Mac’s than at a summer campout, VanHereweghe said he doesn’t want to be pushy on getting a player to sign with the Oilers.

“The last thing we want to do is interfere on the focus of the players who are there,” he stressed. “Their goal is to win the Mac’s tournament. If a team is progressing at the Mac’s, we stay away.

“Everybody recruits differently. I like to identify prospective players, maybe introduce myself, but not put pressure on them. You don’t want a kid ending up someplace where he didn’t want to be.”

He said he also doesn’t want the Oilers to get a reputation of pressure-selling players — and would rather let the team’s record on and off the ice speak for itself.

The Oilers have signed quality players from the Mac’s in the past. Bison defensive stalwart Quinn Sproule signed with Okotoks after catching the eye of Oilers’ director of scouting Jay Magnussen and former general manager Dan MacDonald in 2007.

Sproule was a second-team all-star at the Mac’s in 2007 when he played for the UFA Bisons out of Strathmore.

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