Bruins Director of Amateur Scouting Ryan Nadeau Speaks On NHL Combine Process
With the offseason in full swing, the Boston Bruins are getting ready for the 2026 NHL Draft which will take place from June 26-27 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, N.Y.
One of the events leading up to the draft is the NHL Scouting Combine which is taking place this week in Buffalo.
Director of amateur scouting Ryan Nadeau sat down with Bruins multimedia producer Belle Fraser at the NHL Scouting Combine to talk about this year’s draft.
🎥 B's Director of Amateur Scouting Ryan Nadeau goes 1-on-1 with @bellefraser1 from the NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo: "It's a great time of year for us...there's a lot of build up and excitement for our group to get to this point."#NHLBruins | @WarriorHockey pic.twitter.com/HRkISwXbts
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) June 5, 2026
“It's a great time of year for us to be able to meet a bunch of these kids, ask them a lot of questions, get to know their personalities a little bit more, and just uncover anything, any gaps in our background that we need to fill in,” said Nadeau. “So it's good to get our small group together here and meet with a lot of these kids.”
He went into additional detail on how the combine works and the process of meeting and getting to know the prospects.
“We meet with roughly a dozen kids, maybe 15 kids a day, Monday through Friday,” said Nadeau. “So we go through a lot of the top kids in the draft, again, sit down. We get, I think, 15 to 20 minutes with each kid. Then they do some testing later in the week for them, I think their testing starts Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So our sports performance group will come in, watch that, look through all the metrics, get some eyes on a few of the kids, and give us some more background there as well.”
Nadeau also spoke on getting to know the players and learning more about them.
“Really it's more just [you] get to see them, get to get a little bit of a feel of their personality, see sort of where they are, how they're going to fit into our group,” said Nadeau. “And some kids are a little bit more quiet and reserved, other kids have bigger personalities, so just really getting to see them, getting to know them a little bit, getting to understand their story, and what got them here in the first place, and doing what we can to kind of just uncover a few more things about them.”
Nadeau reflected on being able to have this opportunity with the Bruins and spoke highly of the staff that helps get ready for this type of event.
“Certainly it's a great honor to be able to do it and try and refine our process over the years,” said Nadeau. “Our scouting staff does an amazing job throughout the season, so even once we get here at the combine, we've usually already interviewed every kid at some point this year, so this will be our second or even third time meeting with the kid, usually my first time, but certainly our guys in each area have already sat down with them. We've refined when we have meetings, how often we communicate, all the different inputs that go into how we evaluate these kids, so then we show up here, our draft boards already pretty much in place, we have a good idea of which kids were really focused on in terms of where they fit, where we project them to go in the draft, where we have picks. So, at this point, it's really just fine-tuning it.”
Although he has been in this position for multiple seasons, Nadeau states that he is still excited to be able to help impact the future of the Bruins.
“Oh, not at all,” said Nadeau. "I mean it’s the passion for the draft and for being able to try and bring in players that are going to impact the Boston Bruins and help us win a Stanley Cup is, I mean, it does not get old,” said Nadeau. “All our work all year leads into really one weekend, so there's a lot of build up, a lot of excitement for our group to get to this point, and now it's just kind of, you can see the finish line, and just really excited for what's about to happen.”
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Kim Rankin is one of the lead writers for Boston Bruins on SI and Boston College On SI. A 2020 graduate of the University of Alabama. she joined Alabama Crimson Tide On SI in February 2024 covering baseball, softball, football, men’s basketball, and more for BamaCentral, but has also contributed to Missouri Tigers On SI. She previously worked as the brand manager at Tide 100.9 FM in Tuscaloosa, Ala. She has covered a wide variety of events including SEC Championships, NCAA Regionals, and bowl games.