Mark Seidel has seen his fair share of young hockey prospects overcome adversity, persevering through the tough times and eventually rewarded with a breakthrough at a higher level of the game.

In some ways, his story mirrors that journey, the long-time local junior hockey man introduced last week as the Director of Player Personnel for the Windsor Spitfires of the OHL.

Seidel's journey has hardly been hurdle-free - though the now 54 year-old is quite candid in his admission that many of the obstacles that he encountered were self-imposed.

"I've been working hard on revamping my career after a decade and a bit of addiction (oxycodone) and bad decisions," said Siedel. The mistakes were many - but so too were the changes in lifestyle, embracing a commitment to make amends.

While his willingness to immerse himself completely in the task that is hockey talent assessment has never been questioned and his ability to do so effectively also seemingly well-accepted, Seidel would encounter a stretch of job transiency in an industry where tenure is often difficult.

Even by those standards, Seidel bounced around a lot.

Drug free now for more than a decade, the devoted advocate for northern and indigenous hockey talent had started to settle in nicely, job stability becoming a little more part of his norm.

Then came the 2024 NHL draft in Las Vegas.

Though he was quickly absolved of any wrong-doing, his involvement in the draft information sharing process that would see respected hockey analyst Jeff Marek dismissed from Sportsnet left Seidel in a most unenviable and precarious position.

Highly respected within hockey circles, Marek would quickly resurface with DailyFaceoff.com

"For the past 12 or 13 years, I really have tried to live the right way - and I think I've had some success doing that," said Siedel.

All of which might have been for naught were he to be labelled as "persona non grata" in junior hockey circles in Canada.

"To have Bill Bowler and the Windsor Spitfires give me a chance to sit down and then to win them over with some of the ideas that I have, some of my experience, it means a lot," he said.

In a world where absolute conviction in what you believe can easily give rise to egos the size of Ontario, Seidel can be refreshingly open and self-deprecating when providing a self-assessment.

"I've been doing this since 1990, which means two things," he said. "For one, I'm old; but it also means I have been doing this a long time. To me, you just have to put the work in. Some guys think they can see a guy play two or three times and think they have it all figured out."

"I have to see a guy play 12 or 13 times."

Ask him for at least one example of a "miss", an assessment that turned out to be far too glowing or NHL talent which he simply didn't see and Mark Seidel can provide you a list as long as his arm. He has no issue saying so - knowing that far, far more often than not, he tends to get it right.

That, as he has said, comes with time.

"My first year in 1990, I was in Ottawa," he recounted. "I thought back then I was the smartest guy in the world and knew everything. I look back on my reports and they are embarrassingly bad."

"Scouting is like any other skill - you just have to keep doing it."

The man behind the creation of North American Independent Central Scouting some 35 years ago, Seidel has worked at various times with the Barrie Colts, Owen Sound Attack, Erie Otters, Niagara Ice Dogs, Minnesota Wild, Espanola Screaming Eagles, Sudbury Northern Wolves and even served as NOJHL commissioner for one year.

All of which meant that when he and the Colts parted ways last September, it was highly unlikely Mark Seidel was about to leave the hockey world entirely. In a variety of senses, he is a survivor.

"The advantage I've had in being out of the league for the past year is that when things changed (NCAA rulings that have turned the hockey at this age bracket on its collective head), I was really able to dig in hard."

Some outcomes of the changes were foreseen. Many were not.

Seidel is not about to suggest that he has all of the answers - but he does offer an interesting introspective as to some keys to the landscape that now exists for those who hold OHL management jobs such as his.

"The players, the families, the agents are going to continue to have more control and more power," he said. "There are more options. The spinoff for the (OHL & NCAA) teams is that you're going to have to treat your players right."

"If you treat the players right, those are the players who are going to stick around."

In a life full of lessons learned, Mark Seidel is pretty sure he has this right. And that's a bet the Windsor Spitfires are more than willing to take.