Marlin Muylaert, Neutral Zone’s Canadian director of scouting, has been with the company since its inception in 2015. With a 20-plus year coaching career under his belt, he has gained valuable experience throughout his time behind the bench and has translated that into being an integral member of the Neutral Zone team.
Neutral Zone’s Mathieu Sheridan caught up with Marlin to talk about his career and his work with the company:
MS: You’ve been with Neutral Zone since its inception in 2015. How has your experience been?
MM: “It’s been nothing short of wonderful. To be involved in discussions with Brendan and Steve in the very initial stages and their vision of what they wanted Neutral Zone to be and then to get after it and to start to add scouts, collect reports and grind it out, go to games. Initially, doing a lot of scouting and no one knew who the heck we were, to people acknowledging that these Neutral Zone guys are around a lot, to the point now where Neutral Zone is a common word in the amateur hockey community. Now everybody knows who we are so we’ve kind of gone through a stage of trying to gain some visibility and gain some credibility. I think we’ve done a very good job at both of those so it’s been great. It’s been a lot of fun working with these guys.”
MS: Could you describe your day-to-day role at Neutral Zone?
MM: “Across Canada, we’ve got anywhere between 30 and 40 scouts. Obviously, Canada is broken down into four regions – Western Canada, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Basically what I’ve done is I’ve inserted a regional director in all four of those areas that oversee the scouts we hire for each of those four areas. My job is to be a resource and be a source of support for our regional directors and our scouting staff. Initially. I was doing an awful lot of scouting. I don’t do as much scouting anymore, I’m more communicating with the directors and through the directors to the scouts to keep the Canadian ship sailing straight so to speak. And then there’s booking travel and making the guys get their meal money and all of the logistical things that a director of a scouting agency does as well.”
MS: What led you to want to get into hockey? Did you play growing up or what led you to want to get into the sport?
MM: “Ya, I played growing up but quite terribly. I don’t think I made an all-star team till my midget year but I also loved the game and started coaching at a very young age at 15 years old. This is back in the 70s when the NCCP (National Coaching Certification Program) was just getting started so I got involved in my levels and went to university to take phys ed with the whole goal of becoming a Canadian university hockey coach. I had my first college head coaching job at 23 while I was doing my masters degree in the United States and just kind of parlayed that into a plus 20-something career of coaching a number of universities in both Canada and the United States. The only way I was going to get into elite hockey was as a coach or management, it wasn’t going to be with my hockey talents.”
MS: You got your coaching start with York in 1981, how did that come about?
MM: “I had just spent two years at Wilfrid Laurier, in fact, as their trainer just being around university hockey. I was looking at other programs outside of Laurier and saw that York not only had an honors phys ed program but a concentration in coaching ice hockey run by a guy named Dr. Dave Chambers, who was a former NHL coach, and I just thought that’s the program for me so I transferred to York. When I made the decision to transfer, the head coach at York at the time was a gentleman by the name of Chris Costa. I just met with Chris and told him who I was, what I’d been doing and Chris very kindly found a spot on that team for me, although I really wonder what he thought if I had anything to offer, and I’m not sure I did. But Chris made room for me and got me started so I was grateful for that.”
MS: Could you describe how studying phys ed led you to becoming a coach?
MM: “What was happening in the 70s, it was all because of the 1972 series when we [Canadians] nearly lost to Russia. Hockey Canada came together and said ‘we’ve got to educate our coaches better’ and there was a big push for coaching education not only through the NCCP but they were looking for guys that actually studied phys ed, maybe went on and did their masters degree. For a guy like me that did not play at an elite level, having a masters degree in phys ed was my calling card to get into the university game. Back in the 70s, all of the schools were looking for that. Most of the coaches that I coached with, we all had our masters degrees. It’s not as important anymore and I think the education that coaches can get in these coaching clinics and even online is incredible. But the phys ed understanding – how to train kids properly, how much work, how much rest, the importance of rest, all of that stuff that psychology of coaching, all of that went into impacting my direction as a coach.”
MS: You’ve spent close to two decades coaching university hockey, in formerly the CIS, now U Sports. Could you describe what that experience was like?
MM: “I’m a real big fan of college hockey, both in the United States and in Canada although they’re two different beasts. But what I can tell you is the kids that I coached, they were a great percentage of them that had played in the OHL and they were not giving up on the dream yet. They were just going with Plan B – continue to develop as a hockey player but get my degree in my back pocket. And they were some kids who didn’t have great hockey backgrounds, Tier 2 Jr. A/B, but came in with the motivation and desire to work hard every day, get better and catch up to the Major A guys. They were every bit as valuable as our Major A guys were. I love being around kids who wanted to put everything into hockey but had the foresight to know they were going to need a degree later on. That whole student-athlete environment and how academics plays a role in athletics, I just love that environment and that’s probably what led me to coaching in that league for 20-plus years.”
MS: You also coached in the States at Ohio (ACHA) and at Wisconsin-Eau Claire (NCAA D-III). What was that experience like and is there a difference coaching those levels versus Canada?
MM: “Well certainly there was a talent difference. Division III hockey and ACHA hockey was just simply not as good as CIS hockey. However, those kids are enthusiastic, they want to learn, they want to work and they work equally as hard. They put a lot into it. It was just different skillsets. The Americans kids, guys who are playing hockey, they have every bit of passion for the game as Canadians do. USA Hockey seems to be getting better and better all the time. The U.S. and Canada, that rivalry is already intense and it’s just going to get more intense as the years go on.”
MS: What are some traits when you’re scouting for Neutral Zone? Did those traits change when you were recruiting as a coach?
MM: “I still use my recruiting biases in my scouting biases. I had a lot of success at Guelph and I had a lot of success because I was able to find leaders and character guys that checked all the boxes: work ethic, coachability, good teammate, respect for officials – those types of players and I carry those bias into my scouting of hockey players today. If I see a talented player whose low on the character traits, I can tell you he’s not going to go far. Forget all the skating, stickhandling, shooting, we all see that. All scouts see that. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of differences in what we’re looking for on the ice in terms of the skillsets. I think that the real good scouts maybe do a deeper dive and have a keener eye for the little things that go on the ice and during a game that are indicative of a kid’s good character or bad character. Obviously, we’re trying to impart to our scouts to have a look at too. As you know, as we go down our rankings and those talent buckets get bigger and bigger at each numerical ranking, what’s the separator? The talent and skillset in those buckets are not too far apart and the separators are always character.”
MS: What are some of your favorite things you like to do away from the rink?
MM: “I’m living out on a lake in New Brunswick on a big lot so there’s trees to fell, grass to cut, rocks to clear and always something going around on the big property. I’ve never been a tinkerer or that kind of a guy and now that I’m out here, I have to be. I’m really enjoying that. In my idle hours, it’s spending time with my wife and my two dogs. Going on a lot of walks and playing some guitar. I’m playing some golf. Just enjoying this stage of my life, 63 years in the rearview mirror.”
MS: What are some of the benefits that Neutral Zone brings that people might not know about?
MM: “Well, quite frankly, the number one benefit Neural Zone has is that we do not work for parents or teams so there is nobody who can influence what we are going to write about a kid. If we’re writing something on a kid and you’re reading it, it’s what the scout saw. It’s not due to a parent slipping us 50 bucks or paying us a great deal of money, we truly are neutral. I think that’s what’s probably given us our credibility in the game and why companies like RinkNet and EliteProspects have taken the leap to partner with it. It’s because we are giving an unbiased scouting report on prospects and we do so in a positive way. You’ll never find a Neutral Zone scout ripping a kid apart. We’re ambassadors for these kids, we try to encourage them, and we try to give them a little bit of feedback and hopefully help grow their game. We’re not in the business of trying to tear kids down.”