Canucks Manager of Scouting and Player Information, Jonathan Wall’s in Columbus preparing for the 2007 NHL Entry Draft.

Amongst the craziness of the event, he’s kindly agreed to share a few thoughts and show us a little bit about what it’s like in the life of a scout during the week.

Day four – Thursday:

The Big day, well the first big day.

An alarm clock really was not necessary this morning as the excitement of the day was enough to guarantee an early wakeup. We have been working all year to this point, and we are excited to see the players that we are going to get.

Since last July, our scouts have seen over 2000 games, traveled hundreds of thousands of kilometers, ingested a whole lot of bad coffee, and been away from their families for almost entire months at a time. All for this moment, and it is pretty exciting.

We spent the majority of Thursday working on our list, and doing interviews. We met with 8 prospects from pretty much all over the world, and put them through a mild interrogation to try to get a better feel for them, and how well they would fit into our organization.

We also met for the first time with our pro scouts and coaches to brainstorm about some possible scenarios and options that might be presented to us. It is always a great exercise to look ahead at what our team might look like next year.

A small part of the day also included doing what most of the fans are doing right now; searching for any scraps of info that might help us know what other teams might do. While knowing what their intentions are does not really change our list, it does help us see who might be available with our picks. Especially this year, with our having two picks so close together, any bit of info could prove invaluable.

After being in Easton for five days, I have now sort of figured out a good way to describe this area. To me it seems like a movie set. The area was established less than 10 years ago, and it seems like it has been created right out of central casting with everything in pristine condition.

If anyone has seen the movie Pleasantville, you can kind of understand what I am talking about, as everyone is nice and smiling, almost all of the cars are brand new and there is no litter anywhere to be seen. Vancouver is without question the most beautiful city in the World, but I have to say that what they have created here is pretty impressive.

That’s about it for now, we are starting our morning meeting, and need to get ready for our final group of interviews.